Deer Tick

The ninth studio album from Deer Tick, Coin-O-Matic casts a bright light on a little-known facet of the American mythos: the hidden histories of the band’s home state of Rhode Island, where the everyday dramas of working-class families long collided with the menace of the mafia underworld. As they tapped into their infinite fascination with that strange duality, singer/guitarist John McCauley, guitarist/singer Ian O’Neil, drummer/singer Dennis Ryan, and bassist Christopher Ryan assembled a batch of songs exploring desperation, grief, redemption, and resilience with both cinematic detail and lived-in emotionality. A sharp new turn from one of indie-rock’s most enduringly vital forces, Coin-O-Matic arrives as a complicated love letter to a way of life slowly slipping from the collective memory. 

The follow-up to Emotional Contracts (hailed by Uncut as one of 2023’s best albums), Coin-O-Matic takes its title from a cigarette-vending-machine company that served as the headquarters of Raymond Patriarca—a legendary mobster who ran one of the most ruthless crime families in U.S. history. “If you grew up in Rhode Island years ago, you’d see all these mobsters on the news and then run into them at a restaurant on Federal Hill,” says McCauley, referring to Providence’s version of Little Italy. “They were criminals but also very colorful characters, and I wanted the album to partly reflect a certain nostalgia for that kind of seediness.”

In its soulful contemplation of recklessness and consequence, longing and devotion, Coin-O-Matic ultimately joins the canon of rock albums whose geographically rooted storytelling reveals deeper truths about the human experience. “I think there’s something universal in stories of regret and loss and poor decisions, even if they’re told through the lens of all the odd characters in this little state of ours,” O’Neil points out. “One of the reasons I wanted us to make this album is that I think Rhode Island deserves to be a contender for a place that people sing about,” McCauley adds. “Sonically there’s nothing country about it, but to me it almost feels like a country record set in an urban environment—there’s definitely some outlaws in there. I hope that people see themselves in it, and that they understand a little more about the place that we come from.”