Every week, the Milwaukee Music Premiere connects the city’s artists with our listening audience. If you’re an artist with a track you’d like us to debut exclusively on Radio Milwaukee, head over to our Music Submission page to learn how.
There’s a mountain of retail built on the idea that what’s old can be new again. Thrift stores, resale shops, Play It Again Sports, Music Go Round — they’re all predicated on the idea that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
Today’s Milwaukee Music Premiere tweaks the old saying so that the person doing the discarding is also the person polishing it up until it shines again. In this case, it’s Milwaukee indie-rock outfit Fuzzysurf, whose new song “Self Attraction” is a slice of a bigger project that’s about to get resurrected after being set aside years ago.
The version of new album Black Licorice that we’ll hear when it’s released Aug. 31 isn’t the same one that’s sat on the shelf since its recording back in 2022. It was a period of change that included a new child for singer/guitarist Sean Lehner, a lineup shift for the band and a creative redirection that ultimately resulted in 2025 double album Chameleons.
But there was the matter of this other record, which didn’t feel right putting out anymore. So they didn’t.
Then Fuzzysurf added bassist Joe Ludwig and drummer Colin O’Day to Lehner and keyboardist Corey Murphy, opening up the possibility that new blood might breathe life into an old project. The band listened to the original recording sessions, reworked some things, ditched a few tracks and created several brand-new songs that turned Black Licorice into an era-colliding album.
While Chameleons lived up to its name by changing its genre skin many times across 20 tracks, Fuzzysurf’s description of Black Licorice makes it sound like we’re in for something more singularly driven and — in their words — "unapologetically rock-driven.”
The track we’re helping them debut today lives up to that promise, as well as several others they’ve made about the new album. “Self Attraction” feels relatively weighty for a band who have been followed around by words like “fun” and “upbeat” throughout their existence. The guitars are heavy, the vocals border on snarling, and the lyrics sound just plain fed up:
If life is engineered
Who is the profiteer?
Wound up and set to go
Sit back enjoy the show
I make up an excuse for my deception
I get so damn excited when it happens
I make effective use of the reaction
To get another dose of self attraction
As the band explained, “The song follows someone who knowingly manufactures deception and emotional reactions for their own gratification, ultimately pushing that self-obsession to its extreme and seeing something almost divine in their own reflection. Beneath the humor and swagger, it’s a critique of a culture increasingly built around turning ourselves — and other people’s reactions to us — into a product.”
They also noted that the 11 tracks accompanying “Self Attraction” on the full album will stay pretty close to that lane, as it tackles themes of “manipulation, self-reflection, identity, emotional resilience, fractured relationships, mortality, and the search for authenticity in a world increasingly built on illusion and performance.”
Tonal shifts like that can be tricky. But the circuitous route Black Licorice took to release is further proof that Fuzzysurf doesn’t deliver music they’re not 100% proud of. We’ll hear it together when the album comes out next Monday, Aug. 31, and in the meantime you can listen to “Self Attraction” via the player at the top of the page and on 88Nine throughout today (7:30 and 11:30 a.m.; 3:30 and 7:30 p.m.).
