When Mark Hoppus and Alex Gaskarth combined their talents and the musical ideas they had rolling around in their heads as Simple Creatures, something clicked. Sometimes, artists have a chance to come together to create music that they can imagine making but haven't had the opportunity to lay down. This time, it worked, and we're into it.
The new band's EP, Strange Love is already picking up all kinds of love from fans. Tweets continue to roll in with praise for the six-song collection. They've racked up more than 3 million Spotify streams and 1 million YouTube views on the Drug and Strange Love alone. We're willing to bet that streaming, download, and video view numbers continue to rise as more people get their ears on the songs on the EP. And before long, we'd also bet that fans are going to be asking for more new music.
For now, we've got six songs that take the experience, musical tastes, and desire to do something different than what both of these artists have been doing for years with their bands. It's catchy, fun, experimental, and it stands out from what you'd expect when you hear these names. Yes, there are little tastes and moments when you remember that this is a collaboration sounds that you know from blink-182 and All Time Low - but on the overall, this is something new, different, and fun.
They call it trash-pop. And because they know that's not a traditional genre descriptor that gets thrown around, they explained it...
Nice to meet you, we're Sample Crutches https://t.co/EyCuYNL5dB pic.twitter.com/lE0nysmINg
- Simple Creatures (@simplecreatures) March 29, 2019
It shouldn't surprise us that Simple Creatures are a little out of the box here. blink-182 and All Time Low have both been around long enough to have a signature sound. They know what they're doing in those bands, and even when they try new things, it's an add-on to what those established acts are known to do.
Simple Creatures throws that away and allows Hoppus and Gaskarth to have fun here, playing around with sounds and elements and their music.
Drug is catchy, hooky, and unsurprisingly has approximately 2.75 million plays between Spotify and YouTube. It's a great way to start of the EP at track #1 and should be getting you ready to go for more. Strange Love follows and is an immediate verification that Simple Creatures aren't just locking into one sound and making six songs out of it for a side-project.
More than anything, and most importantly, this EP really is fun to listen to. Put it on when you're in a sing and dance mood, and it'll give you that. Put it on when you're doing something else but want an upbeat audio backdrop, it'll work for that. At 19 minutes, we could go for double. But the pros of Strange Love outweigh that con. The six-song album is tight, pulls you in with its desire to have a good time, and like we said: it's fun.
As side projects go, this is a winner. It could have been too weird. It could have been half-assed. It could have been a lot of things. What it is, is good.
Simple Creatures 2019 Tour Dates
📻 3/28 - Los Angeles, CA - Belasco Ballroom
📻 3/29 - San Francisco, CA - The Midway
📻 3/31 - Philadelphia, PA - Warehouse on Watts
📻 4/1 - Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg
📻 4/3 - London, UK - The Hangar
📻 6/15 - Castle Donington, UK - Download Festival
📻 8/17 - St. Pölten, AUT - Frequency
Stay tuned, we have a feeling there are going to more dates added in the coming weeks.These dudes know what they're doing on stage. They know how to entertain a crowd. And as fans have the chance to see them and tell the world how good the show is, the more shows fans are going to want them to play.
We don't know if a big, long, worldwide tour is going to happen, but we know that there are a lot of fans of both Mark Hoppus and Alex Gaskarth that would love for that to happen so they could be at those shows.
For now, hit play on Strange Love, listen to Simple Creatures sharing their new music with you, and enjoy!
Simple Creatures, Strange Love tracklist
