Not to be confused with the Hull-based shoegazers Bdrmm, Bedroom is the decade-long solo project of Noah Kittinger, so named because it was in his teenage bedroom that he first started making music. It was in that room in 2013 that he wrote In My Head, a song that eight years later was a breakout moment when it got picked up and became something of a viral sensation on TikTok. With his old material resonating with a new generation, Noah decided it was a good time to, reintroduce Bedroom as a “more mature and better version” of himself as an artist. With a new album, Thread, due out in April, today Noah is premiering the latest single from it, Better Friends.

Somewhat counterintuitively, Noah’s route to creativity started with a bout of writer’s block, tired of where his music was heading he severed ties that were holding him back and began confronting the personal issues that were damaging both his musical efforts and his mental health. He decided to take some time out, heading to North Carolina with his best friend, and soon-to-be recording engineer, Blake Parker, “there was just so much chaos going on in our lives and in the world. We both were like, ‘Man, let’s get the fuck out of the city for a while, go somewhere, just make music and see what happens”. The first thing that happened, was Better Friends.

The track is a somewhat brutal assessment of where his head, and his life, were at that moment, Noah spilling his guts as he pleads with the world to give him people who nourish and support, not those who were, “encouraging toxic coping mechanisms during times of struggle”. Perhaps fittingly, the song, and Thread more widely, really only came together when Noah opened himself up enough to lean on new friends, notably Bennett Littlejohn, who adds pedal steel to the song, bringing the textures and creative elements that, “helped birth this whole path of making a new Bedroom album”.

Ultimately Better Friends is a song that finds Bedroom thriving, precisely because it got away from the confines of Noah’s actual bedroom. By setting up a studio of his own he was able to find the combination of space and time required to bring his music to new levels of ambition and inventiveness. Here he adorns his DIY roots, in layers of fuzzy electric guitars, rich waves of slide guitars and rhythmic complexity to create a sound entirely of his own. Sometimes you’ve got to go somewhere new to deal with something old, Bedroom’s future is bright because it is the sound of Noah making a conscious decision to work through his past, “this record is me very bluntly talking about what it is that I’m going through…I’ve grown up a lot as a person and as an artist, and I think this record reflects that. I’m proud of that”.

Thread is out April 28th via Amuse Records. For more information on Bedroom visit https://www.bedroom.news/.