What does an arty, hooky young punk outfit from San Diego know about how politics and greed upended the evangelical movement? Apparently, plenty. Just listen to “The Thief.”
“The song scrapes together stories from the early wave of televangelist charlatans living in complete contradiction to the virtues they preached, ignorant to their own absurdism,” says Blair Gun vocalist/guitarist Joedin Morelock.
Morelock encountered Blair Gun guitarist Zach Cavor on musician-meetup website BandMix. The two filled out the lineup with Cavor’s childhood chum Alland Mendivil on bass and Joedin’s former recording-arts classmate Jake Richter on drums, releasing their debut LP, Blaspheme Queen, in 2023. Mendivil has since been replaced by Alyson Valdez, and the band has readied a more evolved follow-up, There Are No Rival Clones Here, due June 7 via New York’s Enabler No. 6 Records.
“Heady fun” is an apt way to describe Rival Clones—and “The Thief” leans more toward the former. “We took some inspiration from scenarios written about by Joan Didion in various essays,” says Morelock. “We trace through this narrative of fraud chronologically, which is a lyrical style that we haven’t tried much until now.”
We’re proud to premiere Blair Gun’s “The Thief.”
—Hobart Rowland
