A Newbury Comics exclusive color vinyl pressing. Purchase includes postcard signed by Mat Kerekes.

Mat Kerekes, founder and vocalist of the band Citizen, has announced his upcoming solo LP called Nova, which will be released on August 5, 2022.

The albums title was inspired by two places – an early 2000s PC game and the state where hes living. Hes been splitting time between his hometown Toledo, Ohio and Woodbridge in North VirginiaNoVa to locals. A rerelease of the fantasy hack-and-slash game Diablo 2 brought the second iteration with a characters special attack called frost nova. The stars had aligned: Nova would be the next record.

If this sounds like a shockingly chill way to name a record, thats the point. The new album is brimming with imagination, humor, romance, balls, and whimsy. Nova isnt a record that feels like our grave, endlessly serious historical moment; its a record that escapes it.

Kerekes recorded and engineered the record in the basement of his Virginia house, but after tracking drums he discovered a new pet peeve: his own drum style. To redo the drums, he called up his friend, Turnstile drummer Daniel Fang. The pair worked together over two days in Toledo with Steve Warstler, who mixed and mastered the record. At one point, Fang was blasting out drum fills while they were taking levels from his kit. Kerekes hit record. The result is track five, a nine-second percussion meltdown titled Daniel Fang. I thought it was funny, so I put it on the record, shrugs Kerekes.

Nova isnt an essential, high-brow distillation of a theme, angle, or topic. Its just good, fun music, plain and simple. In an industry full of on-the-nose branding, marketing, and sales of ideas, identities, and experiences, Nova feels like the anti-record; it feels honest and real.