When you look up American Power Pop in the dictionary, New Math’s picture should be there. I mean, just listen to this track, it’s fantastic… Did the Shoes come up with anything better? Did Off-Broadway?
New Math, is an early punk/power pop band from Rochester, NY. Today they are unleashing a video for their new single from their upcoming career-spanning compilation Die Trying & Other Hot Sounds (1979-1983) – “The Restless Kind.”
“Die Trying,” their first single and the opening track on the 11-song compilation coming out from Propeller Sound Recordings on July 21, 2023, was produced by Howard Thompson who worked with John Cale and the Psychedelic Furs. It was first released on Reliable Records in 1979 and did receive some airplay on John Peel’s radio show.
In their heyday, New Math opened for big names like the Ramones, The Damned, Human Switchboard, The Cramps, and Gun Club at now-extinct Flower City clubs like the Triangle Theatre, The Orange Monkey, and Scorgie’s, which was practically the Max’s Kansas City or CBGB’s of Rochester.
Towards the end of the 1970s, New Math lit a spark in the Rottenchester music scene that also produced bands like primal garage rock revivalists the Chesterfield Kings, adventurous post-punks Personal Effects, and pop-punk purists the Cliches. With ease, New Math produced charming, should’ve-been-hits like the adrenaline-rush of “The Restless Kind,” the two-tone English Beat-inspired “Older Women,” and of course the hyper-melodic anthem “Die Trying.” Following a trip to The Hit Factory in NYC to record the unreleased singles “Diana” and “Take to the Night,” the band called it quits. However not too long after, the band reformed in 1979 and recorded “Angela,” with the same lineup and became known as Jet Black Berries and were signed to Enigma Records.
