Into It. Over It. returns with messy, cathartic Figure, starting with lead single “Living Up To Let You Down”

Evan Thomas Weiss, better known as the emo revival icon Into It. Over It., announced his upcoming fourth album today. Figure will be out September 18 via Triple Crown Records, but the album’s first single, “Living Up To Let You Down,” is available for streaming now.

Figure was created in the aftermath of a European tour, after which Weiss parted ways with longtime collaborator Josh Sparks who no longer wanted to tour. “It was like somebody had taken a pair of scissors and just popped the balloon,” says Weiss in a press release. “In 20 days, my entire life had switched from full-time touring musician with a partner, to single with a nine-to-five job and this overwhelming feeling of every mistake I had made over the last five years.”

Weiss is careful not to let Figure fall into genre cliches, recounting some heroic triumph. “It’s about trying to make peace with poor decisions that I’ve made,” continues the Cherry Hill native, “and how I can try to reconcile as much as I can, and what I can’t reconcile, how I’m going to cope with that moving forward, and what I can do to be better to the people around me.”

Lead single “Living Up To Let You Down” is an example of that. The song was inspired by a weekend in Nashville, where Weiss met up with an old friend. The result is a bouncy emo-pop track laden with acoustic strumming and bright synths. The upbeat music supplements lighter lyrics like “A couple moments we can squeeze between some other plans” and disguises darker ones like “Tattoos of boots and a noose / now just reminders of the city I hate.”

Unlike previous Into It. Over It. releases, Weiss focused on collaboration and community when building Figure, assembling over 30 songs with drummer and audio engineer Adam Beck, a process that reinvigorated Weiss’ love of making music. “I didn’t come up with a way to reinvent the feeling of being in this band for the first time, it would’ve been the end of Into It. Over It,” he writes.

Figure is available for pre-order here. Watch the video for “Living Up To Let You Down” below.