Singles Spotlight:
GIFT –
“Hand To The Flame”

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I’m excited to talk about another group making some great music: GIFT. They have released the first single from their new album, Frenzy For The Thrill, which will be released on Friday, January 15th, 2027, via indie Brooklyn-based label Captured Tracks. Some insight about the band from their bio on Captured Tracks: “GIFT began in earnest during the pandemic, with Freda holed up in Brooklyn building the lush layers of what would become the band’s 2022 debut Momentary Presence. Momentary Presence and its 2024 successor Illuminator blended various strains of psychedelic music — krautrock, new wave, electronic, shoegaze — while cataloguing Freda’s battles with panic attacks, most often seeking to counter anxiety with transcendence. Yet in the time before Frenzy For The Thrill, Freda found that particular metaphorical drug was no longer working. He gravitated towards grittier, angstier inspirations like ‘90s alt-rock, grunge, and brasher iterations of electronic music. Combined with the band — Jessica Gurewitz (synths/vocals/guitar), Kallan Campbell (bass), Justin Hrabovsky (synths/guitar), and Gabe Camarano (drums) — having become a unit honed by rigorous touring, Freda wanted to create something more visceral and collaborative. The sound of Frenzy For The Thrill became one of five musicians diving into the madness together.”

The press release continues delving into Freda’s thoughts: “The tours behind Illuminator had left Freda ragged. Following a European run with fellow NYC band Bodega, Freda realized that even when things were good he was consumed by an overwhelming sense of pressure. When a friend offered to let him stay at their house in Los Angeles for two months, it seemed a perfect way to decompress, to take time and write songs for other people and put GIFT to the side for a bit. Instead, Freda arrived in Los Angeles as they tamed the final fires of early 2025, to a house full of ash and otherwise not much more than the instruments he brought with him. Moved by the renewal he saw in Angelenos coming together in the wake of the fires, Freda suddenly felt a creative outpouring. ‘I had to reset my brain by tricking it into something new and unfamiliar,’ Freda says. ‘It helped break me out of the feedback loops I was stuck in.’

New GIFT songs arrived, more angst-ridden than in the past, yet not without their own sense of release. They were vehicles in which Freda asked large, existential questions: Now entering his thirties, he had watched friends settle down, and yet found he was not done searching. ‘Being obsessed with making art means you can forget the world outside your own bubble, then you wake up and it’s easy to question every choice you ever made,’ Freda reflects. ‘Making Frenzy For The Thrill was partially about exploring the balance of living as an artist without disappearing into it.’ From despondence, Freda emerged with a revitalized sense of creative purpose and direction. Accordingly, he abandoned any expectations and wrote towards what felt right in the moment.”

Tell us more about the album-making process? Alright. Let’s go back to the single’s press release: “Willfully seeking contrast and contradiction across Frenzy For The Thrill, Freda made GIFT’s most band-oriented album yet, but also sought out electronic producer Teddy Mars, the mastermind behind Samples From Mars. With he and Freda sharing production duties, GIFT adopted the ethos and structure of dance music, but with the rest of the band contributing more than ever before. Harnessing the immediate energy GIFT had cultivated onstage while also incorporating more of their individual instincts in arrangement and songwriting, Frenzy For The Thrill still bears the far-seeing melodies and synth textures of GIFT’s past now anchored by the band’s most muscular performances yet.

The phrase ‘frenzy for the thrill’ came from a key track on the album, ‘The Fly.’ A pulsating, brooding piece of electronica-tinged rock with a lead vocal from Gurewitz, the song provided imagery that defined the rest of the album for Freda. He thought about the fly, zigging and zagging errantly through the air, often crashing into a light that might soon kill it. ‘The fly is a simple creature, programmed to chase one thing — food, light, whatever,’ Freda explains. ‘On the album cover, the fly has gone too far. Not fully dead, but submerged in what it was trying to consume, stuck in a situation of its own making.’  Frenzy For The Thrill encompasses a wild abandon, an almost reckless breed of catharsis, but also themes of control — a person feeling unhinged, a person feeling compelled to chase something even if it may lead to ruin. Loosening one’s grip, letting go, has long been a throughline in GIFT via Freda’s frank reckonings with anxiety. Yet it manifested as something more sinister and kinetic on Frenzy For The Thrill.

‘We’re always looking for resolutions, but life isn’t like that,’ Freda concludes. ‘Frenzy For The Thrill is about still being in love with the chase knowing we might not find answers on the other side. This is the sound of us crashing headlong into the unknown.'”

And now that we’ve explored the band’s bio, discography, and upcoming album a bit, let’s talk about the reason we are here. The song “Hand To The Flame” is today’s newest entry into the SWT Singles Spotlight series. It’s a groove; the synth shines, as do the drums and Freda’s vocals. The song moves forward quickly, and before the last note, you’ll have realized that you want to listen again. And any song from the band, some more. I think the melody on this song is an earworm. And the chorus may grow on the listener as well. Kudos to GIFT for delivering this song to us and sharing it with others. I’m looking forward to hearing the remainder of the album. For all those reasons above, I think “Hand To The Flame’ not only serves as a good introduction to the band GIFT but also as part of the SWT site as we try to advocate for deserving bands and artists.

But don’t take my word for it. Take a listen for yourself and tell us what you think.

The awesome smoke-and-fire-heavy video for the catchy song “Hand To The Flame” from a collab between GIFT’s YouTube channel and the Captured Tracks channel:

(All credits and rights to GIFT and Captured Tracks)

The cover art for Frenzy For The Thrill:

The track list for Frenzy For The Thrill:

1. See The Heavens (5:03)
2. Hand To The Flame (3:28)
3. The Fly (3:46)
4. Every Step (4:01)
5. Instant Rush (4:44)
6. Come Back Down (2:33)
7. Higher Than The Knife (3:17)
8. I Wanna Be A Toy (4:05)
9. I Wish I Met You In Another Life (3:40)
10. Into Oblivion (5:09)
11. Demon Inside (5:23)

Alex M Theel

Co-Founder, Reviewer, Content Creator, Business side, Editor at Scummy Water Tower Productions | Web

Scummy Water Tower Productions co-founder, reviewer, business manager, and editor. Thank you for visiting this site, scummywatertower.com, and YouTube for Water Tower Sessions and SWT Interviews. And all of our socials.
Questions, feedback, or more? Contact me: alex@scummywatertower.com