New - Reverser - Self Titled - LP

If anyone knows how healing music can be, it’s Chicago indie rock band Reserver.

“These songs started as a way to get through a really heavy time when I didn’t know if I’d ever play music again,” admits vocalist/guitarist/synth player Chad Preston as he starts talking about the group’s debut, Reverser, out August 14 on Funambulist Recording Company. “But once we started playing them together as a band, they changed. It stopped being just about the sadness and became something louder and more alive. In a weird way, it felt like using rock ‘n roll to push back against what the universe had taken away.”

Preston’s growing appreciation for the music—and the evolution of the band itself—didn’t happen overnight though, rather taking shape over a tough six-year period. In 2018, he and bandmates, guitarist Adam Penly and bassist Crawfie Ward, were active in another Chicago mainstay, post-punk group The Laureates, when Preston stepped away to care for his wife Kerri who had been diagnosed with cancer. He started using music to cope and many of the songs on the new album took shape during this time, initially as solo recordings.

A few years later, in 2022, Kerri sadly passed away. But her death in some ways gave Reserver life, as Ward encouraged Preston to record the material. Soon, the project evolved into a full band with the addition of drummer Dan Wendt who had worked with many of the members in the side project Moon Mannequin. The vibe, says Preston, eventually became about “loud guitars, filling the room with energy and a bit of chaos.” Or, what you might feel when you want to scream into the void with others who have been through hard times, too.

“The record started as a way for me to process a difficult period and get these songs out of my head,” Preston adds. “But once the band came together, it became something bigger—a way to turn a really heavy experience into something loud, communal, and alive.”

You can hear that spirited exchange on the noisey psych rock single “Server” which the band describes as “The Who interpreting a Spacemen 3 song or vice versa.” Though at its core, the song is “about loss and losing and dissociation during disintegration,” says Preston, adding, “it’s also the beginning of how the band name came to be.”

Another single, “Spirit Fauna” follows a similar shoegazey pattern, which Preston describes as “just a bunch of words that sounded good to me but also serves as a reminder that all humans are animals.” Other standouts are ‘90s-era nods that pull in Reserver’s overarching Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth and Pavement influences. There’s “Creams”—“about nostalgia and moving forward but the future is always closing in” as well as the gripping lead track “Heart Is A Bomb,” which Preston says is “a reference to how all our hearts are ticking clocks that eventually stop and can burst and break when it all becomes too much.”

But if Reverser symbolizes anything, it’s how you can always change course from the heartbreak. You can find a way to survive the unthinkable and become even stronger for it.