Hanging out with The Neighbourhood is as close to being at a clandestine mafia meeting as you can get in the realm of rock’n’roll. They dominate an Italian speakeasy in West Hollywood like a squad who mean serious business on a weekday afternoon. Ringleader Jesse Rutherford wolfs down a spaghetti carbonarra, while the others send up their favorite local sandwich joint that was mysteriously closed this morning. Rutherford brought this pack of music nerds together out of Newbury Park, California in 2011 and with the help of breakout song ‘Sweater Weather’ they became viral sensations. Today Rutherford looks like the kind of emo punk character that could have rolled out of an MTV TRL broadcast in 1999, but his mind is somewhere in 2099. He’s at the epicenter of this motley crew, which is completed by guitarists Jeremy Freedman and Zach Abels, bassist Mikey Margott and drummer Brandon Alexander Fried, who strolls in late with an update on the sandwich joint.
The tools the band acquired from working with the best in the game has helped them manifest the most quintessentially Neighbourhood album of their career, one that delivers on their diversity of interests and nods to the spectrum of artists they’ve championed throughout their lives in music. What’s more, its method of release is forward-thinking, and forms part of a bigger picture, combining the prior two EPs and beginning the road that leads to the next EP that comes later this year. Together the two EPs, this album and the future EP will form a playlist for fans to delve into. Staying true to their tradition of being forward-thinking, the band took inspiration from the idea of a playlist from Drake’s More Life, the idea of a living, changing release from Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo and applied both to their own release. The innovative release strategy should come as no surprise considering the band has been working this way for years. In that sense, it’s hard to imagine The Neigbourhood ever changing.