Bret Koontz & Truancy Club Premiere Their Ethereal Single “Into My Dream”

A consolidation of past and present is how you might best describe the musicality of Bret Koontz & Truancy Club, as you’ll discover on the band’s brand new set, A Sparkle Road Cult. Due for release tomorrow via Earth Libraries, we are offering up an early preview of what’s to come in several hours when the album drops with the debut of, perhaps the record’s standout track, “Into My Dream.”

Influenced by rock and pop subgenres of past and present, the song completely changes directions about midway through, from an indie acoustic rock sound to a throwback, psychedelic jam, harkening back to a generation gone by that still sounds so very relevant. If you are new to Bret Koontz & Truancy Club, it’s a testament to the band’s diverse musicality that seems to diversity with each passing release.

Discussing the new single, Koontz tells us:

“The title of ‘Into My Dream’ says it best. Its chiller stereo acoustic opening serves an an entry point to a winding path that leads beyond shared experience, beyond the point of no return, and into the center of a tumultuous dreamscape. The mind’s eye of the hurricane? Ok, ok… part nostalgia-trip via Big Star anthem-ry spiked with a certain strain of ’90s radio rock, part Syd Barrett slideshow: this song takes a stand for the protection of dreams of every kind.”

There’s a certain originality and ingenuity to Koontz and his band’s new album, even if the sounds aren’t entirely new or uncharted. Throughout A Sparkle Road Cult, the quintet illustrates the influence that power pop groups of the 1960s and 1970s have had on them. You’ll hear the warm guitar-led sounds of groups such as Big Star and The Carpenters within a landscape of 1990s R&B. What brings all of these diverse sounds together is Koontz’s voice, which has a certain warmth and calmness, but also an urgency that would have been appropriate for any era of rock n’ roll.

There’s a lot of debate these days about how to best release an album, and Koontz and his bandmates came up with a pretty clever way of releasing A Sparkle Road Cult. The album is being released as an art book album, which includes the entire album in sheet music form, a colour art page for each track, and a CD. Buying albums in this fashion is how Koontz first learned how to play guitar, so it only felt natural for him to pay tribute to his past as he forges ahead with his band, onto the next creative challenge.

Artwork for the album ‘a sparkle road cult’ by Bret Koontz & Truancy Club