Light Beams - "Coming Our Way"

Photo by Leah Gage

If you're of a certain age, or a certain mindset, you're going to check out anything that is put out by Dischord Records. The legendary DC label has yet to put out anything bad. Their releases are at the very least interesting.

The latest from Dischord is Light Beams. The Washington D.C. band just released "Coming Our Way," which is one of the most exciting releases in the world of punk in quite some time. Punk can be very rigid, but Light Beams blow the doors off the rules of punk while still being solidly punk. Their press release calls them a "post-dance-punk band," and that sums up a song like "Coming Our Way." I'm not exactly sure if they mean it combines dance punk with post-punk, or if it's what comes after dance punk, but either way that describes this song. 

Justin Wm. Moyer (vocalist/bandleader) describes the story behind the new single, which involves his daughter surviving a school shooting:

“I was in my backyard about to pick up my daughter at school one day when I heard what sounded like machine-gun fire. I didn’t think much of it – D.C. is filled with loud sounds. A few minutes later, my daughter called and said someone was shooting at her school. I tried to explain that the city is filled with sounds and that no one was targeting her school. As later became clear, I was really, really wrong: for reasons that still haven’t been explained, a person set up a 'sniper’s nest' at an apartment across from her school and fired, striking a student and a security guard, among others. No one was killed but the sniper, who died by suicide. 

"Once I got to the school to pick my daughter up, I entered a sort of fugue state. I didn’t understand the severity of the incident and started sending pictures and 'feeds' – little bits of reporting – to my editor. Meanwhile, my daughter was stuck behind a police barricade taking shelter in a CVS. But she seemed safe, so I kept wandering around in a journalistic capacity, trying to figure out what happened so I could help my colleagues write a story about it. After about an hour, I was like: ‘I guess I should, y’know, find my child.’ So I found a way around the police barricade and retrieved my daughter from the CVS to which she had fled.”

You can watch the video for "Coming Our Way" below. Wild Life is due out November 3 on Dischord Records and Mud Memory Records, and is available for pre-order here. For more on Light Beams, check out the band on Instagram and Twitter. Upcoming tour dates are below the video.

11/1 Cleveland OH at Beachland Ballroom

11/2 Detroit MI at Donovan's

11/3 Chicago IL at Cafe Mustache

11/4 Madison WI at Communication

11/5 Cincinnati OH at MOTR

11/10 Brooklyn NY at Main Drag

11/17 Charlottesville VA at Visible Records

11/18 Washington, DC at Comet Ping Pong

11/19 Richmond VA at Banditos