The Brooklyn-based rock band The Hold Steady have dropped ther third single off their forthcoming eighth studio album, Open Door Policy, set to be released February 19 with the band’s own Positive Jams label via Thirty Tigers. This single follows the previously released singles “Family Farm” and “Heavy Covenant.”

In “Spices,” The Hold Steady seems to reckon with reconnecting with a self-destructive woman from the narrator’s past life, with lyrics like “She makes it really clear that she’s a way different person than the person that I knew in the past/ But once she starts rolling, it’s wild like the ocean/ And the ocean is violent and vast.” The song is driven by a ‘90s-esque catchy guitar riff and completed with a horn that features in the chorus.

On the “Spices” vocalist Craig Finn shares that it “began with the intro riff that guitarist Tad Kubler brought in and it unfurled quickly when the band got together. It’s probably one of the heaviest songs on the record, but it achieves some levity with the horn section that arrives at the chorus.” He goes on to explain, “Like a number of others on the record, ‘Spices’ speaks of technology – the way texts, social media, DMs, etc. allow acquaintances to pop up into our lives and potentially disappear again just as quickly.”

Listen to the “Spices” of Open Door Policy here:

The band shared that Open Door Policy was largely recorded pre-pandemic at The Clubhouse in Rhinebeck, NY, with help from producer Josh Kaufman and engineer D. James Goodwin.

Finn explained that the album “was very much approached as an album vs. a collection of individual songs, and it feels like our most musically expansive record. This album was written and almost entirely recorded before the pandemic started, but the songs and stories explore power, wealth, mental health, technology, capitalism, consumerism, and survival – issues which have compounded in 2020.”

Open Door Policy will be out from February 19 and is available for preorder here.