The Buttertones Fight Through “Denial” on Fifth Album ‘Jazzhound’

Jazzhound is a resurrection of sorts for Los Angeles’ The Buttertones.

After the band released their fourth album Midnight in a Moonless Dream in 2018 and played through a summer tour, featuring a spot at Coachella, drummer ‘Cobi’ Cobiån needed emergency surgery on his eye, which ultimately left him with partial loss of vision. Ultimately, the remainder of the tour was cancelled—Cobiån will likely regain his vision with a future operation.

It didn’t take The Buttertones long to bounce back and release their fifth album, and the perfect segue from their darker Moonless trance with more shadowy and shoe-gazed tracks of Jazzhound. 

On single “Denial You Win Again,” and the first video off of Jazzhound, The Buttertones confront anxiety, second guesses, and other mental struggles that fester within the mind.

“I think many of us find it hard to face reality especially when most of our problems are self-made,” vocalist and guitarist Richard Araiza tells American Songwriter. “It’s much easier to lie and ignore the glaring issues within, but we all know the easy way is usually never the right.”

The song captures those moments of guilt and regret and when it reaches the point of self-hatred, self-deception and comes into comfort. “We all know this will not end well no matter how deep the head is buried in sand,” says Araiza. “We either choose to walk on virtue road or completely live in delusion and ultimately lose in life.”

Written months prior to the current global pandemic, Araiza says the song’s meaning seems even more amplified now. “No one really knows what’s going to happen or when or if we can ever go back to leading normal lives,” he says. “The way forward would be for us to adjust and adapt to this way of life… instead of denying and thinking everything will be fine in a day or two.” 

Produced by Crystal Antlers’ Jonny Bell, who also worked on Moonless Dream, and the band’s third release, 2017’s Gravedigging, Jazzhound was recorded at Hollywood’s Electro-Vox Studios and is the first album with Cobiån working as guitarist—drums parts were written by Cobiån bit played by session musician Paul Doyle on Jazzhound. Most of Jazzhound was recorded live, encapsulating something more shadowy and dark, still driven along The Buttertones’ surf-ridden beats. 

Uncomfortable in its stark cinematography and storyline, visually the video for “Denial You Win Again,” directed by the Distractor’s team (Mac Demarco) of William Sipos and Sean Campos, represents the tumultuous confrontation of denial guided in lyrics A stir growing in my chest, there’s something wrong and I can pinpoint it. I’m not the one I thought I was, I’m sick and distracted with my pal named disavow.

“Denial” was originally going to be the band’s final single off of Jazzhound, but the band wanted listeners to come up with their own visuals before seeing the directors’ interpretation. 

“[We] figured it would be fun to compare their own version with ours and the directors,” says Araiza. “For me, the rain and water represent delusion irrigating our mind, refusing to think about what could be wrong and watching this garden of avoidance grow inside us.”