We're a weird band," states Princess Goes drummer Peter Yanowitz. He's not wrong. But weird like David Bowie, Bjork and Brian Wilson's Smile might be termed "weird." In other words: unconventional and quite possibly irresistible. Princess Goes' second full-length album, the 12- song Come of Age, is the trio's most accessible work to date, yet it's still chock-full of innovative songs that traverse a thrilling and often surprising sonic and lyrical landscape. The first single, "Shimmer," highlights Michael C. Hall's powerful, ethereal vocals atop quietly propulsive rhythm lines, and features Stephen Trask (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) as guest guitarist. "Shimmer"'s equally stunning and expansive video was directed by Tim Richardson (Elton John, Billie Eilish, Givenchy). "Take Me Home" serves up a soaring emotive trippiness that morphs into headbanging moments worthy of the heaviest metaller or your favorite Zeppelin album, while the haunting "Jetpack" showcase Hall's poignant lyrics and penetrative voice, at once bell-clear and diaphanous, as the song builds to a wild and harrowing conclusion. The group's evolution is ongoing and often unearthly, spacy and provocative in the vein of Bowie's Blackstar. (Hall played Thomas Newton in the original New York cast of Bowie's off- Broadway musical swan song, Lazarus.) "I think the vibe of the latter third of Come of Age, goes to a place that's a little more expansive or hopeful or mystically minded," Hall says. "Though I suppose it starts on that note too. You want some things to have a musical unfolding and flow, but you also want some sort of evolution that makes sense lyrically. I think we managed to do both those things with the sequence." And for newbies to the Princess Goes sphere, fair warning: If anyone goes to a PG show to see the "guy from TV," once Hall is onstage singing, he says, "that actually sort of takes care of itself. If people have some sort of preconception, it's pushed aside once we're up there doing our thing. It's not unique to this band," Hall says. "I go to dinner, and people are like, 'Hey, you're that guy!?' And I'm like, 'I'm not actually that guy.' It's just another version of 'I'm not that guy'." Although Come of Age is the group's second full-length album, Princess Goes are as excited as first-timers. "Until now we've been gestating in this small world, being in our own cocoon and working the last bunch of years," says Yanowitz. "I feel like this group of songs and this sort of statement that we wanted to put out with Come of Age tied in nicely to that. It also felt like we kind of graduated out of that scene the three of had created, and maybe wherever we go next is to the wider world. The making of Come of Age felt like a bookend to the way we were working, a stepping-off point for something new."
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