Deer Tick Announces New Album Emotional Contracts for June 2023 Release

Today rock band Deer Tick have announced that their upcoming album Emotional Contracts will be released on June 16 by ATO Records. Emotional Contracts catalogs all the existential casualties that accompany the passing of time, instilling each song with the irresistibly reckless spirit that has  defined Deer Tick for nearly two decades.

Before heading into the studio, Deer Tick spent months working on demos in a perpetually flooded warehouse space in their hometown while enduring the busted heating system and massive holes in the roof while the band carved out the album’s 10 tracks.

Emotional Contracts fully echoes the unruly energy of its creation, ultimately making for a life-affirming portrait of growing older without losing heart. The upcoming album came to life over an unusually lengthy period of time for the band because each track based on Deer Tick playing around together and connecting in the almost telepathic way that is only possible after nearly 20 years.

Well-rehearsed and overly prepared, Deer Tick embraced free and easy approach to the recording process at  Tarbox Road Studios in Western New York. In the press release band members John McCauley and Dennis Ryan discussed the process of creating Emotional Contracts.

“We’ve had a habit of trying to maintain a strict control over everything in the studio, but this time we wanted to see what it would feel like to let go a bit. We figured that the songs were strong enough to stand on their own two feet, so whatever we put them through would just make them stronger and take us in some new directions.” said McCauley

Ryan adds: “The fact that we’d spent so much time with these songs allowed us to be really free once we got into the studio. No one was overthinking anything, and because of that the album sounds like us in a way that we’d never captured to this extent before.”

Emotional Contracts Tracklist

1.  If I Try to Leave
2.   Forgiving Ties
3.   Grey Matter
4.   If She Could Only See Me Now
5.   Running From Love
6.   Once in a Lifetime
7.   Disgrace
8.   My Ship
9.   A Light Can Go Out in the Heart
10.   The Real Thing