TOPS

TOPS share new single "Falling On My Sword" from their forthcoming new album, Bury the Key, due for release on August 22nd via Ghostly International.

Today, TOPS share a third look at their forthcoming new album, Bury the Key, due for release on August 22nd via Ghostly International.

 TOPS, musicians Jane Penny, David Carriere, Marta Cikojevic and Riley Fleck, write timeless music that reliably threads immediacy and depth. Bury the Key, their first full-length since 2020 and with new label home Ghostly International, is a captivating reintroduction for the Montréal band: ever refined, undoubtedly masters of their melodic craft yet unafraid of evolving and testing themselves against different, at times darker tones.

Showing another facet of their darker side, today they share new single "Falling On My Sword" which channels Carriere's love of hardcore punk from an arrangement perspective, 

"but played in our style" he says. "We were joking around quite a bit when we started writing this song, Jane was playing bass which is very out of the norm for us.

It’s written from the perspective of a teen girl who thinks that everyone sucks and the societal norm of monogamous commitment is pathetic. I guess it could be from the perspective of an adult as well.

We tried to lay the song out in the form of a hardcore punk/beatdown tune, with tritone power chords and a breakdown (for moshing).

In the end it sounds more like a TOPS song than anything else but it was a fun diversion that led us to a cool new place."

Bury The Key faces feelings once locked away, engaging the give-and-take between happiness, hedonism, and self-destruction. While often inhabited by fictional figures, their glowing, grooving, self-produced songs draw from personal observations: intimacy (both inside and outside the band), toxic behavior, drug use, and apocalyptic dread.

When recording started, they noticed a shift and leaned in, jokingly dubbed 

"evil TOPS, We're always kind of seen as a soft band or like naive or friendly in a Canadian way, but we made it a challenge to really channel the world around us." 

says Penny. 

Through the lens of a looming epoch and the clarity that comes with age, TOPS dip into a more sinister disco realm with Bury the Key, giving their soft-focus sophisti-pop a sharpened edge.

 Emerging from Montréal's DIY scene in the early 2010s as progenitors of an indie pop sound still radiating its influence across the contemporary landscape, TOPS’ secret to longevity is simple: keep the songwriting honest and open-hearted and the recording unforced yet pristine, allowing for a band dynamic deeply attuned at every level. Their songs outline the silhouettes of life, and as time goes on — now five LPs, countless tours, and various side projects in — TOPS have only gotten better at what they do. 

The voice of TOPS is Jane Penny, a songwriter, producer, flutist, and singer whose hushed delivery hosts a deceivingly vast range of expression and has surely informed a wave of today's greats from Men I Trust to Clairo. Her lyrical subjects never go out of style: dynamics of power, desire, struggles to be seen, having love requited or otherwise.

Following her move back to Montréal and first solo release in 2024, Penny returns to the neighbourhoods of her former self a step wiser; the sleek cars and forever highways of her songs, penned with her rhythmic counterpart David Carriere, find assured depth in Bury the Key. Carriere, a songwriter, producer, and guitarist with a flair for high-sheen hooks and the relentless drive to match (other projects include DVC Refreshments and Born At Midnite), adds to his bag of tonal and textural tricks. Drummer Riley Fleck, the band's heartbeat since day one and occasional gun for others (Jessica Pratt's live band as of late), broadens his utility, venturing into higher and harder tempos. Keyboardist Marta Cikojevic, who joined TOPS in 2017 just before the landmark I Feel Alive and in 2022 released her breakout debut as Marci (produced by Carriere), expands her role here as well, joining the writing process and backing Penny for some of the record's fullest, most satisfying vocal lines.

It is rare to see a band so aligned and complete, self-sufficient, specialised but agile and ambitious, reaching an elite level of pop precision as their legacy remains largely unwritten. They've toured the world over, from major festivals to the dingiest of dives, sleeping on floors and tour-managing themselves for years, manifesting their success the hard way.

Beyond work ethic, it also comes down to chemistry and taste; when pressed for which artists get airplay in their van, some expected names appear, Fleetwood Mac and Steely Dan, but dig deeper and the veneer of artists like China Crisis, Prefab Sprout, and Francois Hardy, Missing Persons, and Everything But the Girl start to fill out the playlist. An instinct for luster and thrills, songs both sweet and bleak, brings the band to Bury the Key, a prismatic album polished out of the rough. Grounded by pain and pleasure, the complicated joys of being alive, of being a band from one of our era's finest.

TOPS tour dates

Sep 4 – Vancouver, BC @ Vogue Theatre

Sep 5 – Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom

Sep 6 – Seattle, WA @ The Crocodile (EARLY SHOW)

Sep 8 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge

Sep 9 – Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater

Sep 11 – Dallas, TX @ Club Dada - Outdoor Stage

Sep 12 – Houston, TX @ Heights Theater

Sep 14 – El Paso, TX @ Lowbrow Palace

Sep 15 – Tucson, AZ @ Club Congress

Sep 17 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Crescent Ballroom

Sep 18 – San Diego, CA @ Belly Up

Sep 19 – San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore

Sep 20 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Bellwether

Oct 1 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall

Oct 2 – Boston, MA @ The Sinclair

Oct 3 – Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts

Oct 4 – Washington, DC @ Union Stage

Oct 6 – Durham, NC @ Motorco Music Hall

Oct 7 – Asheville, NC @ The Grey Eagle Tavern & Music Hall

Oct 8 – Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West

Oct 9 – Nashville, TN @ Exit/In

Oct 11 – Austin, TX @ Austin City Limits Festival

Oct 14 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall

Oct 16 – Detroit, MI @ El Club

Oct 17 – Toronto, ON @ Phoenix Concert Theatre

Oct 18 – Montreal, QC @ Théâtre Beanfield

Nov 10 – Brighton, UK @ Patterns

Nov 11 – London, UK @ Heaven

Nov 13 – Dublin, IE @ Workmans Club

Nov 14 – Glasgow, UK @ Stereo

Nov 15 – Manchester, UK @ Band on the Wall

Nov 17 – Leeds, UK @ The Brudenell Social Club

Nov 18 – Bristol, UK @ Rough Trade

Nov 20 – Kortrijk, BE @ Wilde Westen

Nov 21 – Paris, FR @ Point Ephemere

Nov 22 – Brussels, BE @ Botanique

Nov 23 – Vlaardingen, NL @ De Kroepoekfabriek

Nov 24 – Hamburg, DE @ Nochtspeicher

Nov 26 – Berlin, DE @ Neue Zukunft

Tickets here

Bury the Key will be released on August 22nd via Ghostly International.

Pre-order here.