New Jersey Rock ’N’ Roll Duo TALL DAYS Bring Downtown Dirt Back Across The Hudson On New LP Breakers
New Jersey rock ’n’ roll duo Tall Days return September 29 with Breakers, their first new album in seven years. Made up of Graham Hartke on vocals and guitar and Joe DeAngelus on drums, the Montclair pair have always worked from a deliberately stripped-down foundation: two people, loud amps, big drums and hooks that stick. On Breakers, that basic philosophy remains intact, but the edges have gotten considerably wider. Drawing from the raw punch of ’60s and ’70s British rock, garage rock and modern indie fuzz, the record lands somewhere between the blown-out immediacy of Jack White and The Black Keys and the restless garage instincts of Ty Segall. Tall Days belong to that particular stretch of rock ’n’ roll geography where North Jersey and New York bleed into each other. The Snack Factory in Montclair on one side. Brooklyn clubs like Our Wicked Lady on the other. Manhattan somewhere in between, with the ghosts of the Bowery still hanging around whether the luxury condos like it or not. There’s a little of that old New York scuzz in Breakers too, harking back to the days when Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Royal Trux could make busted amps, cheap rooms and bad decisions feel dangerous, and New York rock was still supposed to leave a stain on your shirt. On Breakers, Tall Days carry a little of that downtown dirt back across the Hudson, crank the guitars and make it their own.
Written and recorded by Hartke and DeAngelus at their own Snack Factory studio between March 2024 and February 2026, Breakers was built around a simple mandate: make noise and bring the hooks. Amps were cranked, drums were hit hard, and the performances were kept deliberately raw. But for a band known for working with a minimal setup, Tall Days also let themselves get weird. Alto and tenor saxophone, Hammond organ, recorder and a small arsenal of percussion all find their way onto the album, expanding the sound without polishing away the racket at its center. That push and pull runs through the record itself. Hartke describes Breakers as an album of duality, written in response to a chaotic world that can inspire anger one minute and stubborn optimism the next. “Destroy,” “Gaslight Bomb,” “Breakers,” “Night,” “Less Fortunate” and “On Edge” lean into frustration, confrontation and the urge to push back. “She Is My Girl,” “Humanity,” “Cover Song” and “NYC Rock ’N’ Roll” look in the other direction, finding joy, family and reasons to keep believing in people.
The contrasts get especially clear on “Gaslight Bomb,” a fuzzed-out garage rocker aimed at people who weaponize fantasy and insist everyone else play along. Built with low-wattage guitar amps pushed hard, the track turns that frustration into something blunt and physical. “Destroy,” meanwhile, came to Hartke almost fully formed one night before a show at Brooklyn’s Our Wicked Lady. Written from the bitter freedom at the end of a bad breakup, it treats starting over less like healing and more like demolition. Sometimes the cleanest way forward is to tear down what you’re leaving behind. Then there’s “She Is My Girl,” which flips the mood completely. Written by Hartke for his young daughter, the song trades confrontation for the joy and wonder of childhood, with the duo piling congas, bongos, claves, guiro, vibra-slap, cabasa and maracas onto their usual rock ’n’ roll foundation. Family makes its way onto the record literally, too. Hartke’s daughter Hannah, his sister Rebecca and his singer-songwriter brother Matt Hartke all contribute background vocals, turning parts of Breakers into something closer to a family affair.
Tall Days brought in a wide cast to finish the record while keeping its homemade core intact. Mixing was split between Brent Kolatado, whose credits include Lenny Kravitz, Nine Inch Nails and Beastie Boys; Matt Maroulakos, who has worked with Best Coast, The Linda Lindas and Public Access T.V.; and Rubin Nizri, whose credits include Lady Gaga, Sheryl Crow and Steven Van Zandt. Hartke also handled mixes on the record, while Bill Skibbe, known for his work with The Black Keys, The Raconteurs and The Kills, mastered Breakers at Third Man Mastering. The album arrives seven years after Tall Days’ last new music, but the band’s history stretches much further back through the New Jersey and New York rock underground. Previous releases earned airplay from WFMU, SiriusXM and New York’s Q104.3, while their songs travelled well beyond the local scene: “All in My Way” appeared on Netflix’s Lucifer and “Crosstown” landed on Hulu’s Difficult People.
Through all of it, the appeal has remained pretty simple. Tall Days are two guys figuring out how much noise, melody and movement they can squeeze out of rock ’n’ roll without sanding down the rough parts. Breakers pushes that idea further. Angry without getting swallowed by anger, hopeful without pretending everything is fine, bigger without abandoning the stripped-down instincts that got Tall Days here in the first place. New York rock ’n’ roll has lost plenty of rooms, record stores and cheap rents over the years, but its ghosts are harder to get rid of. They’re still kicking around the Bowery, haunting St. Mark’s after midnight, grabbing a slice before the ride back to Jersey. Breakers keeps some of those ghosts company. Turns out rock ’n’ roll is a hard thing to kill.