The month-long BIG STIR RECORDS celebration of all things spooky and spirited comes to an end on Halloween Day itself with the release of the final single from CHILLING, THRILLING HOOKS AND HAUNTED HARMONIES, as we turn the corner toward things to come with the new single “Dark Matter” from Northern California indie pop darlings THE CORNER LAUGHERS. Exuberant and irresistible, it's the first new music from the band in nearly five years and a look ahead at a new album due next year. “Dark Matter” is out October 31 and up for pre-order and pre-save now:

https://orcd.co/cornerlaughers-darkmatter

It's certainly been too long since we've heard from THE CORNER LAUGHERS. The band – Karla Kane (vocals, ukulele), Khoi Huynh (bass, vocals), KC Bowman (guitar, vocals) and Charlie Crabtree (drums) – have hardly been inactive: they've been heard from live stages in their native California, the Midwestern US and the UK since the release of their acclaimed fifth album TEMESCAL TELEGRAPH, their Big Stir Records debut, at the very beginning of the pandemic. There has been a handful of delightful appearances (invariably standout tracks) on tribute compilations, but we haven't been treated to the unique wordplay, inventive arrangements and sheer idiosyncratic joy that characterize THE CORNER LAUGHERS' original music for nearly half a decade.

Given the band's propensity for ghost stories, witchy tales, and odes to black cats, ravens and crows, Halloween is an ideal time for their return. So their surprise reappearance with “Dark Matter” on the Big Stir Records Halloween LP CHILLING, THRILLING HOOKS AND HAUNTED HARMONIES makes perfect sense... and once again, it's a highlight. Easily the most celebratory track on the collection, it's The Corner Laughers in peak form, and for all the references to “new crone covens” and the casting of spells, there's nothing sinister about the song at all. All bright hooks, loping basslines, sweet harmonies and rhapsodic rhymes, its connection to All Hallow's Eve goes beyond the imagery, nodding toward the holiday's characteristic permission for self-expression.

“'Dark Matter' is an incantation and invitation for anyone who feels out of sync with the 'normal' world, whether it be due to aging in a botox and TikTok society, a complete disinclination to join the capitalist rat race, or some other sense of feeling on the fringes. And of course, as always, for the corvids!” say the band. It's not the first time these cleverest but most misunderstood of birds – crows, ravens, rooks, magpies and jackdaws, every last one of them namedropped in the song – have taken center stage in Karla Kane's lyrics, and here they take flight as a proud symbol of nonconformity. Perhaps more than any other track on the Halloween collection, “Dark Matter” is thus a song for all seasons, and its release as a standalone single is a harbinger of things to come as we round the bend into Winter and then on to a new year... because 2026 will mark the year THE CORNER LAUGHERS return with a new full-length album at last. They've got that corvid chatter well organized, and Big Stir Records will be proud to bring it to you.