This February 14, The Open Flames are setting 2025 alight with their white-hot debut album ‘Same Time Next Year.’ The London-based band brings a potent combination of hard-lived experience and new relationship energy to the stage and the studio — and they arrive on a raft of positive reviews thanks to 2024 teaser singles ‘Drop a Coin’ and ‘Eat Alone.’

‘Same Time Next Year’ is a feast of an album; from the Dungeons & Dragons groove of ‘Drop a Coin’ to the early-era Replacementsy rager ‘Lockdown,’ the band rides a wild dynamic wave from crescendo to crescendo. Singer/guitarist David Eastman builds lyrical narratives that he and co-vocalist Paige Brubeck embody as characters — sometimes lonely, sometimes lush — which the band explodes into cinematic color via powerful drums (courtesy Harvey Danger’s Evan Sult), Brubeck and Len Bendel's inventive basslines, and a full spectrum of distorted guitar tones. Eastman’s ragged voice and novelist’s eye are filtered through REM’s arena-rock reverb, Neil Young’s gnarly feedback and X’s boisterous punk energy, but the album also makes room for moments of intimate longing and psychedelic soundshapes.

“This album is about growing into a band together,” says Sult. “It started as a friendship being rekindled. Since our lives diverged in high school, David has been living literally all over the world, experiencing some seriously unreal conditions in developing countries and rich countries alike. I’ve been on major labels, indie labels, and generally leading a rock and art life all around the US with Paige. But he’s the guy who got me playing music in the first place. So when he sent me a song and I knew just what it needed, it felt like we could complete the circuit and work together at last. The title literally describes how we pulled it off, jumping into a studio in London’s Camden Town whenever we had a free moment.”