NEWPORT FOLK FEST ALUMS KINGSLEY FLOOD TACKLES RACE, CLASS, & IDENTITY ON NEW LP 'ANOTHER OTHER,' DUE OUT OCTOBER 14

 

 

 

BULLET SHARES FIRST TRACK “THE BRIDGE” AS EAST COAST TOUR PLANNED FOR FALL

 

Rollicking, literate, five-piece rock and roll band Kingsley Flood offers up a brilliant and thought-provoking musical exploration of identity, race, and class on their new album, Another Other, due out October 14.

 

Another Other explores a confusing reality faced by frontman Naseem Khuri; on one hand, he comes from privilege having grown up in a nice Massachusetts suburb. On the other, as a Palestinian-American, he is an ‘other’ with a funny name and a first generation American experience. Shifting effortlessly between the political and the personal, Another Other examines privilege, responsibility, activism, and our capacity for change with deft musicianship and subtle scene-setting.

 

Produced by Paul Kolderie (Radiohead, Pixies, Portugal. The Man), the record marks the band's finest work to date, blending their “signature high energy” (Rolling Stone) with songwriting “soaked with raw emotion” (Stereogum). Another Other, much like their performances, is urgent, sweaty, vivid rock & roll with everything-on-the-line.

 

Listen to the brand new track “The Bridge,” which Bullet Media calls "ripping."

 

For much of his childhood growing up in suburban Boston, Naseem Khuri didn't even realize he was Palestinian; he always thought of himself as a regular American kid. It was only later that he learned that his mother and father had both been born in Palestine and fled to Lebanon as children; only later that he started to notice walls going up and suspicious glances being cast his way at bars and in airports; only later that he found people considered him—a Massachusetts native—"Middle Eastern," with all the implicit bias and baggage those two words entail; only later that he realized he'd never truly be seen as a "regular" American, despite this country being the only home he'd ever known.

 

"What makes you belong somewhere in the first place?" Khuri muses. "I had this complexity growing up because I could look white, but I also knew I wasn't totally white. Another Other came out of a night at a bar when some news about a terrorist bombing came on TV, and the people I was with put it together that my heritage is from that part of the world. A wall was put up in the blink of an eye. I wasn't doing anything differently, but suddenly I was cast as 'an other.’ I grew up thinking I had the power to define my own identity, and suddenly I didn't.”

 

2013 full-length, 'Battles,' which earned them a main stage spot at the iconic Newport Folk Festival (which was podcast by NPR Music) and widespread critical acclaim, including love everywhere from Rolling Stone and Esquire to Paste and American Songwriter. The band subsequently hit the road for national touring, sharing bills with Grace Potter, Lucius, Langhorne Slim, Railroad Earth, Angus and Julia Stone, Brett Dennen, and more along the way.

 

Fall album release tour dates listed below; additional dates to be added.

 

October 21 – New Haven, CT – Café Nine

October 28 – Gloucester, MA – Rhumb Line

October 29 – New York, NY – Mercury Lounge

November 18 – Cambridge, MA – The Sinclair

November 19 – Washington, DC – Rock N Roll Hotel