When The Gaslight Anthem’s guitarist Alex Rosamilia and bassist Alex Levine started exploring writing together, following the band’s brief hiatus after the 10th anniversary of the Gaslight’s second album, The ’59 Sound, released in 2008, the two played around with some sounds, before enlisting former The Ratchets frontman and guitarist Jed Winokur and Trevor Reddell (Let Me Run, D’Arcy, Dead Swords), to form Forgivers.
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Fused in the band’s collective British punk, post-punk and new wave influences, and pulling from their individual roots, Forgivers navigate some dreamier alt-rock gaze on their first single “Some Future.”
“I’m trying to get back to what I could have been doing this entire time but was too blind to see it,” says Rosamilia of Forgivers. “Music is fun again. I feel like I’m getting to do this all over again with the knowledge that I have, and I want to make sure that I do it right.”
Levine adds, “The four of us have done this so many times with other people that we know when it feels right and when it really feels right. And this really, really feels right.”
Forgivers formed rather fatefully after Ed Auletta, owner of North End Recording, where Rosamilia recorded with Dead Swords, first suggested Winokur. Discussing Winokur at a Jersey City bar one day, minutes later he passed the two in the streets, which Rosamalia and Auletta saw as a sign.
Rounding out the band was Reddell, a recording engineer and drummer, who has worked with Rosamilia on Dead Swords.
Rehearsing socially distanced in Reddell’s garage, dubbed “Forgivers Lodge,” the band started shaping the sound of Forgivers and have been building up a collection of songs, maneuvering around some of life’s pleasures and pains.
“We want this to be a little more thoughtful than what’s out there, sensible yet senseless,” says Winokur. “We’re just going to put things together that create tension, and see what comes of it. And if they come out sounding classic and happy and sad at the same time, then that’s kind of the goal.”
