New Idea Society sign to Relapse, announce new album Fire On The Hill
Featuring Stephen Brodsky (Cave In, Mutoid Man) + Mike Law (Wild Arrows, Eulcid)
Photo by Caleb Gowett
New Idea Society has taken on differing shapes and forms over the years, but at its heart is the duo of Mike Law (Wild Arrows, Eulcid) and Stephen Brodsky (Cave In, Mutoid Man), a pair enraptured and united by the alchemical power of songwriting. With a connection that can be traced back to their high school years, between them exists an intuitive understanding that informs exactly what New Idea Society is at any given point. On May 15, 2026, New Idea Society will release their fourth full length studio album, Fire On The Hill, via Relapse [pre-order].
Today, New Idea Society share the album's first single and music video for “Dancing Horse." Law comments: "Part of 'Dancing Horse' first appeared all the way back in 2007 and it took a lot of forms over the years that never quite worked. Then out of nowhere it arrived somehow fully re-formed and totally realized into one of my favorite songs I've ever been a part of. The original idea started on an August night in Budapest and was tied together one August morning in 2024 back in Massachusetts. It was one of those moments where Steve reached deep and found something that had been floating around in another universe and brought it to ours." Brodsky continues: "I remember listening to Mike’s original demo for 'Dancing Horse'— it was a shoegaze thing with one lyric that shone brightly through the sonic haze: 'There’s a dancing horse on my roof.' My fiancé had just hung a horseshoe above the front door of our home. A native Texan, she explained that a horseshoe points up to catch luck and then flips over to rain it down… suddenly, that one line from the demo spawned a whole other thing in my head. I’m grateful that Mike was receptive to me taking a brilliant seed of his imagination and going off to the races with it."
Video directed by Caleb Gowett
Although the pair have come a long way since their earliest explorations in audio in the late 90s, the roots of New Idea Society’s alliance were forged in those makeshift basement studios. For Fire On The Hill, Law and Brodsky took a more collaborative approach to songwriting than on previous releases. With Brodsky describing their process as “microscopic” and Law marveling at the particulars of the minutiae they pored over, the attention to detail and their meticulous approach to making adjustments in service of the work shines through in the cohesiveness of this collection of songs. With demos passed back and forth over months— Brodsky sending them in the early morning, and Law taking the evening shift— the songs evolved naturally; refining a chord progression, adapting a lyrical perspective, or in the case of the track “Lantern,” rewriting the words entirely.
Having spent a busy year in 2023 working within multiple full band settings, Brodsky found himself leaning into the simplicity of composing music again with just one other musician. He found himself inspired by the spacious, minimalistic approach of albums like Stereolab’s Emperor Tomato Ketchup, and artists such as PJ Harvey (in a somewhat poetic twist, the artwork for Fire On The Hill was painted by James F Johnston, a member of PJ Harvey’s band). With these artists in mind, Brodsky turned to Law and the pair began to piece together fragments that harkened back to their formative, lo-fi experiments in sound. The origins of lead single, “Dancing Horse”, can be traced back to 2007, but under their synergetic stewardship during this fertile period of work, it was transformed.
By allowing themselves to be fully immersed in the storytelling of the album, they became more attached to the songs themselves - and more discerning about what would make the cut. Thematically Fire On The Hill is about love, in its many forms. With each track detailing some element of navigating emotional relationships— the beauty, the pain, the loss and the hope - the duo have captured the immediacy and urgency of such feelings, tempered by a sliver of yearning that stops short of tipping into nostalgia.
A sense of place is woven throughout the album, one that transcends mere geography. However, personal circumstances did facilitate Law and Brodsky quite literally returning to the Massachusetts stomping grounds of their youth during the writing process, and their creativity flourished when they embraced the same experimentalism that originally drew them to each other. Even in the years when they were not working on projects together, their creative paths and friendship remained constant. Now with years of experience to their names, alongside a developed vocabulary and extended sonic palette to draw from, they have created something specifically and idiosyncratically New Idea Society. Fire On The Hill is them in full flight, at the height of their collective powers.
Stay tuned for New Idea Society live performance news in the near future.
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