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ABOUT
THE MESSTHETICS AND JAMES BRANDON LEWIS
Deface the Currency(Impulse! Records)
Add date: 2.24.2026
Release date: 2.20.2026
Links:
Apple Music
Bandcamp
Facebook
Instagram
Official Website
Spotify
Tidal
YouTube
The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis announce their second collaborative album, Deface The Currency, out February 20 on Impulse! Records. This new album preserves the tightness and variety of their critically-acclaimed self-titled debut album, but reveals new levels of confidence and risk over seven tracks. Deface The Currency — a statement of vigor, sensitivity and spontaneity— is a result of the band playing 150 shows together in one year. Pre-order is available here, and you can listen to or watch the official video for the lead single, “Gestations,” out now.
To celebrate the album announcement, The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis announce a headlining tour across North America, kicking off on April 17 in Portland, OR. See all tour dates below, and tickets are available to purchase here.
For the uninitiated, The Messthetics were formed in Washington, D.C., drawn together by mutual admiration: Anthony Pirog had grown up listening to Fugazi, the era-defining post-hardcore band anchored by the rhythm section of now-bandmates Joe Lally and Brendan Canty, while the bassist and drummer heard the genre-spanning guitar visionary play around town and took note of his unusually inclusive aesthetic. Pirog had played and bonded with the brilliant saxophonist James Brandon Lewis before the Messthetics formed, and in 2019, he invited the saxophonist — whose massive, soulful sound has made him a star of the contemporary jazz scene — to sit in with the group live. The collaboration blossomed and eventually led to the quartet’s 2024 LP, The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis.
As strong as that effort was, it documented a union that was still in its infancy: The trio worked up most of the material apart from Lewis and then rehearsed with the saxophonist for just one day before entering the studio. “We literally were not a band that did what bands do at that point that we made the first record,” Lally notes.
The quartet’s subsequent extensive touring brought about a very different result on Deface the Currency. “The more you know someone, the better the relationship is, the more enriched it becomes,” Lewis says. “It’s like a cast-iron skillet: The more you keep cooking in it, the better the food gets. So I think that’s what you hear on the record, and you hear an urgency of now.”
The band’s heightened communication comes through in Deface the Currency’s many surprising dynamic shifts. On “Universal Security,” Pirog and Lewis’s floating melody, played over a waltz-time pulse from Lally and Canty, segues into the saxophonist improvising against a wall of richly textured guitar noise. And “Gestations,” which layers a bebop-esque line atop a taut funk groove, holds its energy in reserve before revving up to an explosive climax that suggests doom metal meets Ask the Ages, guitarist Sonny Sharrock’s 1991 avant-jazz masterpiece, which the quartet has recently covered in concert.
More than any earlier statement by the band, Deface The Currency seamlessly melds the sounds that make up its collective DNA, from punk rock to free jazz and funk, balancing compositional precision with palpable improvisational fire. The album is available to pre-order here, and will be released on all formats on February 20, 2026.
Apple Music
Bandcamp
Official Website
Spotify
Tidal
YouTube
The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis announce their second collaborative album, Deface The Currency, out February 20 on Impulse! Records. This new album preserves the tightness and variety of their critically-acclaimed self-titled debut album, but reveals new levels of confidence and risk over seven tracks. Deface The Currency — a statement of vigor, sensitivity and spontaneity— is a result of the band playing 150 shows together in one year. Pre-order is available here, and you can listen to or watch the official video for the lead single, “Gestations,” out now.
To celebrate the album announcement, The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis announce a headlining tour across North America, kicking off on April 17 in Portland, OR. See all tour dates below, and tickets are available to purchase here.
For the uninitiated, The Messthetics were formed in Washington, D.C., drawn together by mutual admiration: Anthony Pirog had grown up listening to Fugazi, the era-defining post-hardcore band anchored by the rhythm section of now-bandmates Joe Lally and Brendan Canty, while the bassist and drummer heard the genre-spanning guitar visionary play around town and took note of his unusually inclusive aesthetic. Pirog had played and bonded with the brilliant saxophonist James Brandon Lewis before the Messthetics formed, and in 2019, he invited the saxophonist — whose massive, soulful sound has made him a star of the contemporary jazz scene — to sit in with the group live. The collaboration blossomed and eventually led to the quartet’s 2024 LP, The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis.
As strong as that effort was, it documented a union that was still in its infancy: The trio worked up most of the material apart from Lewis and then rehearsed with the saxophonist for just one day before entering the studio. “We literally were not a band that did what bands do at that point that we made the first record,” Lally notes.
The quartet’s subsequent extensive touring brought about a very different result on Deface the Currency. “The more you know someone, the better the relationship is, the more enriched it becomes,” Lewis says. “It’s like a cast-iron skillet: The more you keep cooking in it, the better the food gets. So I think that’s what you hear on the record, and you hear an urgency of now.”
The band’s heightened communication comes through in Deface the Currency’s many surprising dynamic shifts. On “Universal Security,” Pirog and Lewis’s floating melody, played over a waltz-time pulse from Lally and Canty, segues into the saxophonist improvising against a wall of richly textured guitar noise. And “Gestations,” which layers a bebop-esque line atop a taut funk groove, holds its energy in reserve before revving up to an explosive climax that suggests doom metal meets Ask the Ages, guitarist Sonny Sharrock’s 1991 avant-jazz masterpiece, which the quartet has recently covered in concert.
More than any earlier statement by the band, Deface The Currency seamlessly melds the sounds that make up its collective DNA, from punk rock to free jazz and funk, balancing compositional precision with palpable improvisational fire. The album is available to pre-order here, and will be released on all formats on February 20, 2026.
Photo Credit: Pat Graham