14 October 2022 - 0 Comments

Wellington, four-piece Hans Pucket writes nervy but effortlessly danceable rock songs about feeling bad. Today, the band release Bankrupt, the third single from their forthcoming second full-length album No Drama.

The track is accompanied by a hair-raising video directed by Hans Pucket-basist Callum Devlin. A performance-based video with a Halloween-appropriate concept behind it, Devlin jokes that the video's spooky elements and electrifying climax have helped him process his own anxieties about the release of the band's forthcoming LP.

WATCH: Hans Pucket - Bankrupt video

"Bankrupt might be my favourite song from the album, so naturally, I put myself in charge of directing this video," Callum explains. "This concept (some form of “band in a room” video) has been banging around my brain for over a year. I’d been holding on to a lot of misplaced fear and dread around this album release, which I think led to this very dark tone. Annabel shot the hell out of it, and our skeleton “Prince Phillip” really stole the show. It was a truly cathartic experience, getting to electrocute the band for this video. Any fear is now gone, I am ready for the album to come out now."

Today, Hans Pucket has announced a run of 2023 North American tour dates with label buddies and good friends The Beths. All dates are listed below.

Tour Dates
16/02 - Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom
17/02 - Seattle, WA @ Neumos
22/02 - Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
24/02 - Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall
26/02 - Toronto, ON @ Phoenix Concert Theatre
28/02 - Boston, MA @ The Sinclair
2/03 - New York, NY@ Brooklyn Steel
3/03 - Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
4/03 - Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
6/03 - Asheville, NC @ The Orange Peel
7/03 - Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade - Heaven
8/03 - Nashville, TN @ Brooklyn Bowl
10/03 - Austin, TX @ Scoot Inn
11/03 - Dallas, TX @ Tulips
14/03 - Denver, CO @ Summit
16/03 - Phoenix, AZ @ Crescent Ballroom
17/03 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda
18/03 - San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore

The band are scheduled to perform their special Hans Pucket Midnight Karaoke Challenge at Auckland's The Others Way Festival on Saturday, October 22nd. And earlier this week, they announced their No Drama album release party weekend. The two-date tour will commence with a special hometown show at Wellington’s Vogelmorn Hall on Saturday, November 5th, followed by a performance in Auckland at The Tuning Fork on Sunday, November 6th.

No Drama gleefully captures the all-too-common twenty-something anxieties of talking too much and then being unable to find the right words to say. The album came together over several years, and during its creation, the band consisting of brothers Oliver (vocals, guitar) and Callum Devlin (bass), and drummer Jonathan Nott added multi-instrumentalist Callum Passels, who provided all the horn arrangements on the LP. Recorded with Jonathan Pearce of The Beths at his Auckland studio, the album is full of big leaps, immaculate arrangements, and a ton of immediate grooves.

Both lyrically and sonically, No Drama is a departure for Hans Pucket from their 2018 debut Eczema. “I realized I didn’t want to write any more real heartbreak songs,” says Oliver Devlin. “We were and still are a live band. We're still trying to make catchy music that people can dance to, but also really interesting to us: songs about growing up and finding how you exist in the world.” Songs like My Brain Is a Vacant Space with its blistering guitars and ebullient hooks, hone in on the feeling that you have nothing to offer while Bankrupt, a fuzzed-out punk track, boasts lines like “I don’t know if I’ll always feel like / I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.” Overall it’s a remarkably eclectic record where the smooth pop of a track like Kiss the Moon can coexist perfectly with the Abbey Road freakout of Some Good News. “We didn’t want to be afraid of our 15-year-old self's influences,” says Oliver Devlin. "We really wanted to make an album that teenage us would just be amazed by.”

The result is Hans Pucket’s most sparkling and confident collection yet. While it’s danceable and fun, it’s also a thoughtful exploration of anxiety, a call for empathy in a turbulent time, and a relatable reminder that it’s hard to figure things out.

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