Predatory Headlights

Predatory Headlights is a double album by Appleton, Wisconsin-based rock group Tenement. It was released in June 2015 by New York-based record label Don Giovanni Records. Perhaps due to its length and frequent genre cross-over, it was initially ignored by many established music publications but eventually ended up on Rolling Stone's "15 Great Albums You Didn't Hear In 2015" list and Spin magazine's "2015 Overlooked Albums Report". According to The New Yorker, the album "Highlights the strongest aspects of the group's songwriting". It was ranked #100 by The Village Voice on their 2015 Pazz & Jop critics poll. The album's lyrical themes were largely influenced by Amos Pitsch's observations, musings, and experiences as he traversed America in the summer of 2012, playing drums for a reunion tour of 1970s power pop group, The Nerves. The song lyrics and accompanying album art draw on prominent motifs of Americana in an effort to reflect the darker aspects of America and its political and social climates. Iggy Pop played three songs from Predatory Headlights on the March 4th, 2016 episode of his BBC radio show and proclaimed, "Hats off Tenement, You got big balls." An 8th grade English class in Nablus, Palestine were tasked with the assignment to individually review Predatory Headlights in the spring of 2016. The reviews were sent to Amos Pitsch with a warning from their teacher, Mr. Alex: "The kids who wrote the reviews are really great kids, but have some very strange musical taste, most listen to Palestinian Dubkeh, or Egyptian and Lebanese Pop, so your music was a bit strange and foreign to some of them.” Many of the children focused on "creepy" and "nightmare" elements of the music and spoke of concrete ideas that abstract or instrumental passages in the songs made them think of, such as the sounds of bells representing a "ghost city" and the buzzing string sections in "Hive of Hives" sounding like the buzzing of bees. Pitsch commented to 88Nine Radio Milwaukee that it was interesting to observe how the children picked up on deeper themes in the music and how dynamics in the music emotionally affect the listener, while many professional music critics utilize reviews to home in on what other groups or musicians they can compare a record to.