The Bobby Lees don't need much in the way of introduction. Within a few seconds of exposure to their furnace-blast live shows or their bottled-lightning studio records, it's easy to hear why they've earned fans in legendary musicians like Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry, and Henry Rollins. They're as uncompromising in their sound and generous with their energy as any of their punk ancestors who first rewrote the rules of engagement back in the 1970s. Led by singer and guitarist Sam Quartin, drummer Macky Bowman, and bassist Kendall Wind, The Bobby Lees bring wildness and danger back into punk rock. Their fourth album and Epitaph debut New Self marks a thrilling new chapter for the band while doubling down on what's always made them so magnetic.
The members of the Bobby Lees first met in Woodstock, NY, in 2017, and officially released their debut album the following year. Since then, they've toured extensively on both sides of the Atlantic, building a dedicated following year by year. Their ferocious presence has always been undeniable, but New Self elevates their sound to even brasher heights. Produced by Dave Sardy and Alex Pasco in Los Angeles, the album sets The Bobby Lees' signature bravado loose across a wide and reverberating soundscape. They've never sounded quite this expansive or emboldened before.
At the heart of New Self glows the wonder of growing into somebody that you could barely imagine when you were younger. "I'm older now / I've gotten help / I wish you could meet my new self," Quartin sings on the album's raucous and bittersweet title track. It's a sentiment that took some time to find. The record arrives after a period of deep uncertainty for the band. Toward the end of 2023, the Bobby Lees went on an indefinite hiatus: The deepening economic pressures of the music industry weighed heavily on them, and the labor of touring edged the group close to burnout. "We hit a ceiling with the cycle of funding our own records and then barely breaking even on tour," says Quartin. The band took a break from performing and started trying to find a sustainable balance instead of working at their limits with no end in sight.
After they announced their hiatus, the Bobby Lees received an outpouring of support from their fans -- including actor Jason Momoa, who contacted the group and offered to fund their next record. "That was such a gift for us," says Quartin. "It made the whole experience of making the record a lot lighter."
Returning to writing songs proved to be a welcome relief for Quartin. "I start to feel ill, physically and spiritually, if I don't have a place to put my creative energy," she says. While writing the songs on New Self, Quartin, Bowman, and Wind experimented together with new entry points, rather than beginning with guitar chords and lyrics as they'd done before. The barrelling, high-contrast "All I Got" was born from a guitar riff that Bowman wrote and shared with the group. Quartin asked her bandmates to send her recordings of bass and drum loops while they were on tour with another band, then used those loops as the starting ground for new songs. "I'd never written without a guitar before, but I had so much fun walking around listening to those beats and writing down lyrics," she says.
Throughout the process of writing and recording the album, Quartin embraced a more deeply collaborative creative philosophy. "I used to think that if you work as hard as you can and put all of your energy into everything, you'll get back what you give. But it didn't pan out that way," she says. "If I'm giving 90 percent, there's only 10 percent left for whoever I'm working with to give back. So I tried doing less and seeing what happened. It ended up being a really nice change for me."
Part of that change Quartin attributes to reading Ralph Waldo Emerson. "I bought the portable Emerson, and the chapter that I just read over and over again was called 'Spiritual Laws,'" she says. "That shifted how I approach the exchange between people – what's a healthy balance between giving and receiving. I think some seed of that went into these songs."
Sometimes when you give up control, you end up claiming more power than you ever knew you had. You can hear the Bobby Lees easing into a new confidence -- one that's both looser and more towering -- all throughout New Self, from the seething, fiery "Napoleon" to the rambunctious, offbeat take on PJ Harvey's "50ft Queenie." This is the sound of a band who's scrambled over shaky ground only to come back stronger than ever: more confident, more connected, louder and fiercer and secure in their own skin.
