Most days, I’m an anxious mess. For better or worse (usually worse), I let the details of life – no matter how minor – consume me. (Sorry, Mom, I’m biting my fingernails again.) The frantic and sometimes mindless chatter of our daily lives has slowly chipped away at my attention span. It’s exhausting and, frankly, sort of embarrassing. I can open a new browser tab and in a matter of seconds forget why.

Short of doctor’s prescription, I need a comedown – anything to help me let go. And so I am forever grateful for the Radar Brothers, who have constructed a catalog of music that sort of levitates above my petty concerns. There are certainly complexities to it that I could never understand; I’m just happy to let them carry my brain to some far-off place.

So I’m fairly giddy that a new album from Jim Putnam and Co. (now a six-piece band), Eight, will be released on Jan. 29 via Merge Records, undoubtedly the first great record of the new year.

The band premiered a the first track, “If We Were Banished,” and I love how Pitchfork described it: “… None of it sounds lazy — Radar Bros. sound like they’re pushing against some immovable object and when a new chord after the cyclical chorus, it feels like a true accomplishment, the point where you finally muster the strength to get off the hammock or couch. It’s a huge little song.”

Pre-order Eight at Merge.