Upstate New York’s X AMBASSADORS just dropped new album ahead of Toronto show this April
Their NORTH AMERICAN TOUR kicks off TODAY with STOPS IN 44 CITIES
Toronto, ON (April 5, 2024) — Townie, the highly anticipated new album from X Ambassadors—brothers Sam Nelson Harris and Casey Harris along with Adam Levin—is out today on Virgin Music.
Stream/purchase HERE and watch/share a visualizer for new song, “Smoke on the Highway,” HERE.
In celebration of the release, the band took the stage on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” earlier this week to perform “No Strings” from the LP. Watch/share the performance HERE.
Townie marks a compelling new chapter for X Ambassadors as they return to their upstate New York roots and paint an intricate portrait of their hometown’s most mundane aspects and the community that molded them. Leading up to the release, the band shared album tracks “Follow The Sound of My Voice,” “Your Town,” “Half-Life,” and “No Strings,” the latter of which is currently #25 on AAA Radio.
Reflecting on the album, Sam shares:
Townie is a home-coming album. Casey and I are from a small college-town in central New York called Ithaca. Ithaca is home to three universities: an Ivy Leaguer, a liberal arts conservatory, and a state community college. The students make up more than 50% of the population, and the town largely exists for and because of them. They’d call us ‘townies’— the people on the periphery who existed mostly as just background actors in the movies of their college experiences.
I am a Townie. I will always be a Townie. To deny that is to deny everything that I am. And yes, my town was small, but the people I grew up with never let me think that the world wasn’t big and exciting and out there for the taking. In my town I was loved, I was encouraged, I was accepted, I was challenged, I was knocked down and picked back up again a million times. It might not have been the cultural Mecca I dreamed about, but we had a pretty sick independent movie theater and more than one good coffee shop. The Red Hot Chili Peppers never came to play our State Theater, but that meant less competition for the all-ages shows we’d put on at the Wownet Internet Cafe. The guys at the music store knew my mom, so they let me spend hours in there ‘testing out’ guitars and pedals and recording equipment like I was actually ever going to have the money to buy anything. No one ever made me feel like an idiot for having dreams, or that those dreams couldn’t come true—just that they’d still be there for me, that MY TOWN would be there for me, in case they didn’t.
I’m so lucky to have grown up where and how I did. Full stop. From the moment I gleefully left town at 18, I think that idea took root in me somewhere; and so, it feels very appropriate that, 18 years later, we’d be putting out an album that’s a love letter to Ithaca and to Upstate New York.
This is Townie. For my town and Casey’s, for Adam’s and Russ’, and for you and yours. For the Townies in all of us.
Tonight, their extensive tour in support of the new album kicks off in Vancouver and features stops in 44 cities across North America, including New York, Los Angeles, Nashville, Chicago, Denver, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Seattle, Austin and more, including a sold-out stop in their hometown of Ithaca. Complete list of dates below. The shows will see support from New West and Rowan Drake in the U.S., and Noah Gundersen in Canada.
The dates come fresh on the heels of their hugely successful U.K./European tour, which saw sold out nights in Paris, Amsterdam, Glasgow, Munich, Zurich, Cologne and their largest show to date in London.
The new music follows a move from the band’s hometown of Ithaca, New York to Brooklyn, an explosive debut album, extensive global touring, as well as recent work with massive artists such as Lizzo, Rihanna, The Weeknd and SZA, and multiple songs penned for major motion pictures.
Townie adds to a renowned career for X Ambassadors, who exploded onto the scene in 2015 with the success of their Platinum-certified debut album, VHS. The record featured singles “Unsteady” and “Renegades,” which have since garnered more than 1.3 billion streams on Spotify and led the band to a three-year long world tour. VHS was followed by ORION (2019), the Belong EP (2020), The Beautiful Liar (2021) and (Eg) (2023), a series of collaborative singles featuring artists such as BRELAND, Teddy Swims & Jac Ross, Medium Build and PAMÉ.
Recently, the band released “Deep End,” which was written for and featured in the new movie, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. The track is just the latest contribution the band has made to major films, with other works including “Torches” (Transformers), “Great Unknown” (The Call of the Wild) and “Sucker for Pain” (Suicide Squad) among others.
TOWNIE TRACK LIST
1. Sunoco
2. Smoke on the Highway
3. Your Town
4. I’m Not Really Here
5. Rashad
6. (first dam)
7. Fallout
8. Women’s Jeans
9. Half-Life
10. Follow the Sound of My Voice
11. Start A Band
12. No Strings
X AMBASSADORS TOUR DATES
April 5—Vancouver, BC—Vogue Theatre*
April 6—Kelowna, Canada—Altitunes Festival 2024
April 9—Calgary, AB—The Palace Theatre*
April 11—Edmonton, AB—Union Hall*
April 12—Saskatoon, SK—Coors Event Centre*
April 13—Winnipeg, MB—Burton Cummings Theatre*
April 16—London, ON—London Music Hall*
April 17—Montreal, QC—Theatre Beanfield*
April 18—Ottawa, ON—Bronson Centre*
April 19—Quebec City, QC—Impérial Bell*
April 23—Waterloo, ON—Maxwell’s Concerts and Events*
April 24—Toronto, ON—Danforth Music Hall*
May 4—San Diego, CA—The Observatory North Park+
May 5—Pioneertown, CA—Pappy & Harriet’s+
May 7—San Luis Obispo, CA—Fremont Theater+
May 8—San Francisco, CA—August Hall+
May 10—Portland, OR—The Hawthorne Theatre+
May 11—Seattle, WA—The Showbox+
May 13—Salt Lake City, UT—The Depot+
May 14—Denver, CO—The Ogden Theatre+
May 15—Colorado Springs, CO—Pikes Peak Center+
May 17—Omaha, NE—Slowdown+
May 18—Minneapolis, MN—Varsity Theater+
May 19—Des Moines, IA—Wooly’s+
May 21—Chicago, IL—House of Blues+
May 22—Grand Rapids, MI—Elevation+
May 24—Detroit MI—Saint Andrew’s Hall+
May 25—Milwaukee, WI—The Rave II+
May 26—Cleveland, OH—House of Blues+
May 28—Millvale, PA—Mr. Smalls Theatre+
May 29—Philadelphia, PA—Brooklyn Bowl+
May 31—New York, NY—Irving Plaza+
June 1—Ithaca, NY—State Theatre of Ithaca+ (SOLD OUT)
June 2—Boston, MA—Paradise Rock Club+
June 4—Washington, D.C.—9:30 Club+
June 5—Norfolk, VA—The Norva+
June 7—Charlotte, NC—The Underground+
June 8—Atlanta, GA—Buckhead Theatre+
June 9—Nashville, TN—The Basement East+
June 11—Dallas, TX—Granada Theater+
June 12—Austin, TX—Mohawk+
June 14—Phoenix, AZ—The Van Buren+
June 15—Los Angeles, CA—The Fonda Theatre+
June 22—Mexico City, Mexico—Foro Puebla
September 19-22—Louisville, KY—Bourbon & Beyond Festival
*with special guest Noah Gundersen
+with special guests New West and Rowan Drake
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