PKEW PKEW PKEW Announce New Album ‘OPTIMAL LIFESTYLES’  which will be Released 1st March 2019 via Big Scary Monsters (UK) and Dine Alone Records (US/Canada) also a run of tour dates with hotly tipped LA Punks  Spanish Love Songs have been released. Final news is to let fans know what to expect the band have been streaming lead single ‘I Don’t Matter At All’ (streamed below)

‘I Don’t Matter At All’. Much like the album itself, is a giant leap forward for Warne’s songwriting, pulling inspiration from The Hold Steady, of course, but leaning deeper into the retro-rock feel of bands like The Strokes and Japandroids, too.

“Is this good or is this bad?” ponders Warne of the lifestyle Pkew sings about. “It’s fun to live like an idiot, but it’s probably bad, also. We’re all constantly wondering if we’ve ruined our lives forever or not, being in a band.”

Song-by-song, Optimal Lifestyles lays out a journal of the sort of living Warne speaks of, but this isn’t a jokey, bro-ish shrug-off of his circumstances, and neither is Pkew’s purely self-indulgent self-destruction. It’s an acceptance of the circular futility of life in Toronto, increasingly marked by hellishly-accelerated rent increases and unfeeling gentrification.

More than anything, this record is about trying to cope with a city, an industry, and a world that increasingly doesn’t seem to give a shit about people—only money. So Pkew Pkew Pkew cope by calling out the bullshit.

Pkew Pkew Pkew’s central thesis is that things might get fucked up from time to time, but there’s still value in trying. Warne testifies that though it’s a Sisyphean, almost masochistic, struggle to be in a band in 2018, it’s better than the alternative, like joining the vulgar charade that is the fraudulently-earnest, vapid hugging-crowd at beige adult parties, where no one is really happy, but everyone pretends to be.

Warne and the rest of Pkew are honest about where they’re at in life, and over time, one comes to realize that their sardonic wit cloaks a quiet optimism.

“There’s always something better, and it makes sense to try for it,” Warne says. “That’s the shitty and good part: you still do it, cause otherwise, you’ve given up.”

May 2019 UK Tour Dates w/ Spanish Love Songs:

07.05.19 – Brighton – The Hope & Ruin
08.05.19 – Manchester – Soup Kitchen
09.05.19 – Birmingham – The Flapper
10.05.19 – Bristol – The Exchange
11.05.19 – London – New Cross Inn