BIO

Pink Beds sits at the intersection of spacious grooves and lush song-crafting. If All I Have, the band’s debut 2020 LP, was a love letter to the sounds that surrounded them in Appalachia, the March 2024 follow-up, Spare Key To A Memory, is a nuanced and evolved form, showcasing their love of lush, angular, and ethereal sounds designed to resonate with our deepest emotional experiences.

Shifting from a lockdown songwriting project to an electrifying live act, the band has taken on a vibrant and captivating quality all to their own. Playing off of the spark of a live environment, the band evolves and expands upon their familiar compositions, taking them to new and exciting places. After securing a foothold in southeast markets, becoming a FloydFest On-the-Rise artist, a Relix Magazine Sonic Showdown Finalist, and making prominent regional festival appearances, the band is eager to bring these new songs and experiences to audiences throughout 2024.

Pink Beds from Asheville, NC comprises Aaron Aiken (Vocals, Guitar, Keys, Synths), Jackson Van Horn (Guitar, Keys, Synths), Logan Hall (Bass, Synths), and Ryan Sargent (Drums, Percussion). The group explores their shared influences nurtured by a deep bond with one another.

“What started as a casual jam has morphed itself into one of the most intriguing new musical acts in Western North Carolina. Aiken, a Brevard native, now fronts an Asheville group that stands at the intersection of indie rock, psychedelic folk, and cerebral pop. It’s a seamless blend, more so a vibrant flow, that harkens back to the sounds of early 2000s indie icons The Strokes and Keane, with a thick thread leading to the melodic camps of Tame Impala and Snow Patrol.”

— Garret K. Woodward, Rolling Stone Contributing Writer

PRESS QUOTES

Coming Soon

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BIO

Without knowing that the world around him would soon become unrecognizable, San Francisco songwriter Adam Spry already felt off his axis and out of place. A years-long battle with depression had left him scarred and fighting to tread water in a fast moving society that doesn’t have time for indecision. Working as a full-time musician in numerous touring bands and recording projects had left him burnt out, with a creative hole that needed to be filled. Stopped dead in his tracks by the pandemic, like so many of us, Adam began to carve out a new reality of all his time spent at home with his partner and dog.

Having time to reflect on what is important in life turned out to be a blessing in disguise. With a newfound perspective, Adam found his creative spark in the midst of the pandemic’s darkness, and began writing new songs. After furiously recording demos onto a loaner 4-track cassette recorder, Spry slowly began to dig himself out of the hole and started self-recording songs that would become his debut full-length album. After recording the majority of his parts in his home studio, Adam called upon Trevor Brooks (Ezra Furman, Art Moore) to help bring the songs to life. In addition to adding overdubs on numerous instruments and co-writing on a tune, Brooks’ also mixed and co-produced the album.

The ten magnetic tracks of Slightly Off Kilter encapsulate the ebb and flow of the new existence we have all adopted. Opening with the beautiful and vulnerable track “Madeline,” Adam’s forthright vocals and acoustic guitar are accompanied by lush sonic textures and Harrison-esque slide guitar licks. The ensuing tune “Cruel Dream,” driven by a thumping rhythm section, is a dark descent into the racing mind of a conflicted narrator, unsure of what is real, all tucked into a 70’s-inspired highway ride. “Rotten Mausoleum” bursts out of the starting gates with an anthemic arrangement of harmonized guitar lines and thunderous drums and crescendos into carefree indie rock at its finest. “Real Bad Feelin’” is a powerful ode to the familiar feeling of someone you love who is slipping through your fingers, and being too stubborn to fix it until it is too late.

Draped with a tranquil arrangement, the cosmic “Black Hole Woman” is a desperate cry to not give up hope, while “Creatures Of Habit” brings beautiful vibrant layers built upon a classic singer-songwriter foundation. “Spin The Wheel” is a markedly catchy pop rock number about taking a chance that is bookended by waves of cascading shoegaze guitars and synthesizers. “Coming To See Me” plays like a summary of life spent apart during the pandemic with the lines “Are you still coming to see me? I don’t care if it kills ya, I need a little peace of mind and I can’t find it unless I’m with ya.” 

Spry’s haunting baritone vocal leads you into “Leave It Alone” a nostalgic waltz seemingly plucked directly out of a bizarre fever dream set in a 1960’s family carnival. The album draws to a close with the heartfelt track “Circles,” which details a painful cycle of fighting with someone you love and trying to find a way to break it. Adam Spry’s songwriting embraces the unknown and forces us to accept our imperfections and try to learn from them. Slightly Off Kilter is a no-punches-drawn slugfest that will leave you wanting another ten rounds.

PRESS QUOTES

“…a boon of rich compositions, genuine lyricism, confident and tasteful guitar riffs, and sonorous tenor vocals that have an inspiriting effect.” – The Bay Bridged

“…these athletic songs demonstrate his versatility and understanding of not just Americana, folk, and rock music, but musical proficiency in general — weaving ’70s, ’90s, and modern indie rock all into one seamless experience.” – The Bay Bridged

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Check out “Rotten Mausoleum” (single out 1/18/23) – the lead single from Adam Spry’s new album Slightly Off Kilter: https://adamspry.fanlink.to/rottenmausoleum

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Zza is a thrashy new lo-fi punk band made up of Crystal Fighters’ Graham Dickson, Dom (IS TROPICAL’s drummer), Bob Piano, and W. Noon. Formed in the fall of 2014 to write Super Bowl Rock, they now have three songs to be considered for Super Bowl LVII, in the form of their self-titled debut EP, Zza (https://zza.fanlink.to/zza). 

Hoping to replace “Welcome to The Jungle” at every event in every stadium and arena across the world, they have no idea of what’s in store but are ready to rumble. 

PRESS QUOTES

Coming Soon

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LISTEN TO ZZA: https://zza.fanlink.to/zza

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Brett J Kent laughs as he recalls the birth of Powder Horns, the Asheville-based rock band of his creation: “I never thought I could!” 

It turns out he can. Following the lockdown of 2020 and the sudden collapse of his previous band, Brett describes that time period. “I was ready to give up. After too many disappointments and falling-outs, it would have been easy… but I knew I had some things left to say.” But Brett’s predicament was that he was a bassist who had never written a proper song. So, as a sort of challenge to himself, he decided he would pick up an electric guitar, cultivate an excess of willpower and not stop until he had something. To his surprise, what ensued was a flood of creativity. Brett unlocked something inside of himself that was completely buried. For the first time ever, he couldn’t stop the ideas from flowing out. Brett promptly began workshopping songs with a modest home studio setup, recording every instrument one at a time – including drums. 

The songs felt solid from the get-go. As it turns out, Brett realized that his long running experiences of working in record stores, music venues and recording studios instills strong ideas and values of what makes a song good. There’s no way he wouldn’t have been influenced by the 15 years spent in and around music. The main thing Brett knew was that the presence of passion in artistic expression is what distinctly separates the so called good from the so called bad. He explains, “If I am passionate about my vision from every angle. It will mean something. It will mean something to me. And perhaps it will mean something to others as well”.  This attitude pushed Brett to dig deeper into chiseling a vision of an authentic expression of self —— And so, from the crevices of his mind, Powder Horns began to spawn. He knew he had to peel back many layers of his ego and trauma responses to tap into raw emotions. “I’m going to make myself sing loudly about my deepest feelings?!? I was scared.” But he kept going. 

Lyrically, Brett managed to tap deeply into a place where he could be honest. Dealing with the suicide and death of close friends, the paranoia of hyper-vigilance, and diving into the depths of his own childhood sexual trauma – he found the truths he needed to release, through song. He had to sing – and scream – these songs, until his throat was on fire. And it enriched him. Brett was finally able to stare down his inner demons and exorcise them into songs, which are just as fierce as they are courageous. 

With lyrics and imagery flowing, Brett honed his skills as a guitarist and as a vocalist. At first, his goal was to get it all off his chest and onto homemade demos that he could listen to for a therapeutic release – the songs were good, but he knew he wouldn’t be satisfied until he recorded them in a fidelity that suited his taste. With a determination to see his vision through, Brett finished fleshing out those demos and booked studio time. He was finally ready for someone to help make it better, but most importantly – he was comfortable enough to share his stories.

While rounding out Powder Horns’ live lineup, Brett linked up with fellow Asheville musician, Elijah Raymer. A drummer as unique of a musician as he is talented, Raymer hits hard, plays fast and makes his drums sing – he was the perfect fit for Powder Horns. In searching for a place to track the songs, Powder Horns found a relationship with Adam McDaniel and Alex Farrar, the studio wizards behind the boards at Asheville’s revered new recording studio, Drop of Sun. Together, they took the ideas to the finish line. Collectively, it was pure chemistry from the outset. Each had the resounding feeling that they were making a great record, and for Kent, it truly felt liberating.

After recording the bands’ first EP and their self-titled follow-up debut album, there was no slowing down Powder Horns. Before their debut full-length was even released, the band had already begun tracking their forthcoming sophomore album, Dissolution. Brett passed the bass duties off to Matt Tobia, wanting to approach this record with a raw, live band feel. In a frantic three days, Powder Horns tracked Dissolution’s seven songs in its entirety. Deviating from the bands’ traditional approach, the new album takes a different path. There are still plenty of fast, loud songs – but there’s also a lot of nuance in the songwriting. 

Album standout “Arm’s Length” is a delicately fragile centerpiece, while “Unlovers” (the album’s lead single) is a turned-up rocker that brings as much grunge and grit as the album closer “The Cloud and The Stone” brings heartfelt songwriting. Another highlight “The G.O.M.s” pummels the aural canvas midway through, with an unrelenting wash of spiraling guitars and gripping vocals. For once, the record that the band set out to make is exactly the record they made. It lives and breathes as anything can live and breathe – Brett and his bandmates were overwhelmed with the final result.

Live, their lineup is now rounded out by second guitarist Tony Bones, exerting an energy that harkens back to punk’s genesis – though it would not do justice to describe them as just punk. Powder Horns fuses punk and noise rock with an undeniable dose of power pop, resulting in bonafide earworms.

PRESS QUOTES

“…bring together punk, garage rock and noise rock sounds, alongside a discernible share of eighties-infused power pop.” – Destroy // Exist

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OUT NOW: Powder Horns’ lead single “Unlovers” + official music video: https://powderhorns.fanlink.to/unlovers

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Wickerbird is the atmospheric dream-folk project of Blake Cowan, started in the wild foothills of Mt. Rainier. It began as a means of relating the understanding he found wandering the woods, told in distilled daydreams and wrought within the distant strands of tranquil, wistful guitars and cavernous, haunting harmonies.

His prior work includes The Crow Mother (2012), The Westering (2013) and The Leaf Maker (2015) — collections of music that are steeped in allegories of disillusionment and transition, casting personal insights under layers of natural metaphor and mythical imagery. 

Where this past work concerned itself with forest-bound introspection, examining the forces of change in their capacity for growth, Wickerbird’s upcoming full-length record The Sea Weaver shifts its perspective outwards to the horizon, reckoning instead with the destructive aspects of change. 

While his vantage remains lodged in those same diminishing natural spaces, The Sea Weaver instead explores his relation to the rapidly unraveling human context that envelops him and in doing so, contends with a haunted acceptance of being bound to its fate. It is a collection of threadbare elegies for the end, as overheard through the walls of a crumbling house. 

With gauzy, liminal atmospheres, stark finger-picked melodies, reverberant choirs, and mythologized natural imagery, Wickerbird makes an accounting of what emotions remain – when the anger and fear of a stolen future have long burnt off.”

PRESS QUOTES

“The Sea Weaver by Wickerbird is a pensive, deeply spiritual folk record that will stay with you long after its final notes have rung out; haunting but mesmerizingly beautiful.” – Everything Is Noise

“[One of] the 50 best songs of 2012 — Every fan of Bon Iver should listen to Wickerbird’s “The Fold.” The powerful first song from The Crow Mother the track lives in that beautiful space between intimacy and distance. It’s a ghostly, organic piece of music that swells with an almost spiritual sincerity.” – Pigeons & Planes

“[Wickerbird] is ultimately like watching a foreign film with no subtitles—deeply moving, but without your fully understanding why.” – FLOOD Magazine

“…his vocals have a Gregorian density…the harmonies recall a haunted bedroom version of fellow West Coast folkers Typhoon.” – Consequence of Sound

“Like hazy outlines suddenly becoming clear through the fog, a beautiful moment of departure …the most perfectly subdued soundtrack to the quiet passing of a day” – Gold Flake Paint

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OUT NOW: Wickerbird’s long-awaited new album, The Sea Weaver via Lost Tribe Sound: https://wickerbird.fanlink.to/theseaweaver

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On Beat Radio’s last album, 2016’s Take It Forever, bandleader Brian Sendrowitz offered up a succinct chestnut of self-examination: “I’ll always be that singer / Who sings the words like they mean too much,” Sendrowitz declared on the rousing “Song for Camden Power.” “That’s because the words always mean too much in my mind.” 

For Sendrowitz—Beat Radio’s singer, songwriter, and only permanent member—that may well be a statement of purpose. Since starting Beat Radio back in 2005, amidst the halcyon days of NYC music blogs, Sendrowitz has excelled at writing open-hearted indie-rock songs that double as life rafts, carrying him through the tumultuous waters of adulthood, grief, and familial trauma. 

You don’t juggle songwriting with raising five kids while recording demos in a laundry room if you don’t believe every word, and on Real Love, Beat Radio’s sixth album (and first since 2006 with founding member Philip Jimenez), it’s clear that Sendrowitz does. Songs ripple with catharsis and hard-fought empathy. Choruses reach out for understanding through the pain and disconnect. Put simply, it is Beat Radio’s best and most honest album yet.

“There was nothing to hold back anymore,” says Sendrowitz. “This whole record just feels like the record I was working towards my whole musical career. I went all in emotionally in a deeper way than I was capable of before.” 

With a textured sound that splits the difference between lo-fi indie-pop, folk jangle, and emo vulnerability, Beat Radio grew out of Sendrowitz’s years as a mainstay in the early 2000s New York singer-songwriter scene. After growing up on Long Island playing in emo bands (one of which included a young Daryl Palumbo of future Glassjaw fame), Sendrowitz became obsessed with Bob Dylan and began performing in coffeehouses during college. In 2005, aiming to move beyond his folksinger origins and write anthemic pop songs with a more raggedy edge, he formed Beat Radio with producer/multi-instrumentalist Philip Jimenez (formerly of Wheatus). 

The band’s 2006 debut, The Great Big Sea, attracted critical raves and drew comparisons to Neutral Milk Hotel and The Weakerthans. Critics raved, and major labels started calling. But Beat Radio’s momentum stalled when the original lineup disbanded in 2008. Over the next decade and change, Sendrowitz sporadically kept the dream alive in his basement studio while raising a family near the south shore of Long Island. New albums appeared intermittently, testaments to his eclectic influences; there was 2013’s Hard Times, Go!, which grew out of the musician’s obsession with Swedish pop star Robyn, and 2016’s Take It Forever, full of lo-fi reflections on an artist’s place in the world.

Real Love (out this fall via Totally Real Records) represents a new beginning. For one thing, it marks a reunion between Sendrowitz and Jimenez more than a decade after the latter’s departure. Sendrowitz describes their collaboration as “a trust exercise”; he would send over skeletal demos and, in the hands of Jimenez and his wife Kathryn Froggatt, they would blossom into ornate indie-rock gems. Real Love is flush with lush sonic flourishes—the rustling banjos on “Lowlands,” the climactic sax on “Radioactive,” the elegiac violins and layered harmonies on the title track—that rank it as Beat Radio’s most fully realized record yet.

At the same time, the record injects a new urgency into Sendrowitz’s songwriting, woven from several years of heartbreak and rigorous self-examination. “I think I had a very shallow narrative of my life. That just started to unravel,” the musician says.

In 2020, when Sendrowitz began writing Real Love, he felt his world tilting off its axis. A dear friend died unexpectedly at 37. Struggles in his marriage had come to a head, forcing him to question his identity as a husband and father. And, as the new decade began, Sendrowitz went through a painful fracturing with family, which resulted in him becoming estranged from his parents—a profoundly difficult decision that proved necessary for his emotional well-being.

With the help of therapy, Sendrowitz underwent a period of reckoning and painful growth. He took stock of his flaws and turned to music. Immersing himself in wide-ranging influences—from the grief-powered catharsis of Nick Cave’s Skeleton Tree to the rowdy emotional intensity of Irish folk music (The Pogues) to a playlist he jokingly describes as “baby-boomer midlife crisis music” (Graceland! Tunnel of Love!)—he used songwriting as a means to make sense of the chaos and to heal. “The songs on this record are way more vulnerable and more connected to my real life,” Sendrowitz says. “I think I’ve learned how to be more emotionally honest as a person.” 

On the stirring centerpiece “Family Name,” Sendrowitz confronts intergenerational trauma and what it means to accept a fraught family background (“The mistakes I’ve made and this psychic pain / Is a legacy in the family name”), while the jangly pop of “Protection Spells” finds the singer reflecting on a decision to sever family ties: “Needed to walk away / To save myself / And sleep to dream of better days.” “Solid Ground” is a somber meditation on a marriage strained though unbroken by crisis, while the immensely moving title track is the most honest kind of love song, which is to say, one that reckons with the difficulty of making love last across decades and life changes: “We’ve got a real love / Sometimes it ain’t enough / No matter what it takes / I’m never giving up.” 

While that lyric was written for his wife, Liz, a similar sense of dogged determination describes Sendrowitz’s songwriting career. At 44, he knows he’s not a buzzy new band. But the songs have never felt more meaningful; the stakes have never seemed higher. “When I look at bands that feel like they started to coast, it’s because they don’t really have to prove themselves anymore. For me, I was just trying to go all in,” Sendrowitz says.

– Zach Schonfeld

PRESS QUOTES

“…refreshing and enthralling…” – Drowned In Sound

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OUT NOW: Beat Radio’s second single from Real Love: https://beatradio.fanlink.to/radioactive 

MUSIC

Stream/Share “Family Name” – the lead single from Beat Radio’s new album, Real Love: https://beatradio.fanlink.to/familyname

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Zack Keim can find inspiration nearly anywhere. The Pittsburgh singer-songwriter hatched the hook for his recent single “Canyon” while driving around Washington, D.C. making food deliveries. “I was delivering Uber Eats, and I wrote that on my phone—just a voice memo,” Keim recalls. An insistent vocal refrain (“Can-yonnn!”) was all it took; Keim started strumming the melody on his guitar, and pretty soon the song blossomed into a buoyant folk-pop gem of a tune. Keim’s first solo single since his 2017 debut First Step, “Canyon” was released in July, serving as both a monumental leap forward and the first taste of Keim’s forthcoming sophomore effort, Battery Lane. 

Now Keim returns with the B-side, “Alice” a clanging, psychedelic folk singalong that draws catharsis from childhood heartbreak. The track finds Keim singing in harmony with Laurel Wain of the acclaimed Pittsburgh-based group String Machine, while a tapestry of distorted la-la-la vocals brings a reckless exuberance to the chorus. 

“I wanted to do a Sonny & Cher sort of thing,” says Keim. “I asked Laurel to come on the track and she was willing. I think she did a great job. It’s a song of heartbreak, but it’s also kind of a happy rendition of the song.”

At 25, Keim—whose musical background bridges the gap between garage-rock scuzz and kaleidoscopic folk reveries—has done enough performing for several lifetimes. Born and raised in the factory town of Blawnox, Pennsylvania, just outside Pittsburgh, Keim first picked up a guitar at age 13, when he enjoyed pretending to play along with his dad’s Beatles Anthology CD. He formed his earliest bands in middle school, performing Strokes and Arctic Monkeys covers to pubescent classmates. His life changed when he started sneaking out of the house to catch indie-rock concerts, particularly the acclaimed Pittsburgh group 1,2,3. “Seeing 1,2,3 definitely had an impact on me as a musician,” Keim says.

Keim’s father started taking him to local open mics around Pittsburgh. It was at one open stage that Keim met Bob Powers, a veteran slide guitarist 40 years Keim’s senior who introduced him to garage-rock staples from the Stooges to Black Lips. Keim and Powers hit it off and, after working together on blues standards, formed the garage-punk outfit Nox Boys. Keim was just 16 when the band was signed to Get Hip Records, and his life became a whirlwind. Nox Boys rose through the local underground scene, released two gloriously scuzzy albums with Get Hip, and toured nationwide and—more recently—Europe. 

By 20, Keim yearned to create something of his own. His debut solo album, First Step, arrived that spring on Get Hip’s Folk Series sublabel. An aching and sparse work of sixties folk classicism, First Step wore its vintage influences on its sleeve: Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Nick Drake. “A lot of artists, when they start out, their first record takes a lot of inspiration from people they listen to,” Keim reflects. By comparison, “Canyon” and “Alice” find Keim expanding his musical parameters and locating a voice all his own.

Keim found new inspiration at a low point in the spring of 2020. His band’s West Coast tour had been canceled as the coronavirus swept across the country, forcing him to drive from San Diego straight back to Pittsburgh. Soon their first European tour was canceled, too. “That was a turning point, an epiphany for me,” Keim says. During that eventful spring, Keim became entranced by Hamilton Leithauser and Rostam Batmanglij’s I Had a Dream That You Were Mine and Tobias Jesso Jr.’s Goon LP. He also broke up with his longtime girlfriend, who wanted him to become a postman. “I didn’t want to give up on my childhood dream,” Keim says. 

While living in Washington, D.C. and saddled with credit card debt from his canceled tours, Keim began delivering for Uber Eats to pay the bills, playing the occasional gig on the side (even at an abandoned subway station). Inspired by the lush textures of the Hamilton/Rostam album, he began pushing himself musically—taking piano lessons, experimenting with a sixties organ, playing synths and keys. He built a home studio in his room, and began buying new gear to stimulate his creativity. One night, while down and out in D.C., Keim performed some new songs on Instagram Live, which caught the attention of musician Josh Sickels, formerly of 1,2,3. Keim began sharing his demos with Sickels and his ex-1,2,3 bandmate Chad Monticue. In a surreal culmination of Keim’s teenage obsession with 1,2,3, the two musicians (who now comprise the duo Animal Scream) enthusiastically agreed to produce Keim’s new material.

On “Alice,” you can hear this creativity entering full blossom as Keim’s new songwriting revels in a new sonic complexity. “Alice” is both a marvel of Keim’s chemistry with Animal Scream and a throwback to his earliest years. The song was inspired by a first experience of romantic rejection: In middle school, Keim played in a She & Him-esque duo with a girl in his school. Keim had a crush on the girl, who ultimately rejected him because she was dating Keim’s best friend. “Alice” recounts the formative heartbreak that one never forgets (and no, Alice is not her real name).

Originally written a decade ago, “Alice” has morphed through several permutations as Keim’s artistry has evolved. At 16, Keim recorded an early demo of the song on GarageBand, which was released as a 45 by Get Hip Records. At 20, Keim rerecorded the track as a spare, Dylan-esque folksong for his debut album. Yet he was never quite satisfied with it. “I think I always wanted to do it with a full band,” Keim says. 

With help from Animal Scream, “Alice” finally gets the raucous, exuberant rendition it deserves, replete with dense layers of slide guitar and a pounding percussive stomp. Speaking of unconventional percussion, the track opens with the sound of Josh Sickels smacking a cement brick in the studio. (“It sounds like a railroad,” Keim raves.)

Now based back in Pittsburgh, Keim is currently at work on his second solo album, titled Battery Lane after the street he lived on in the D.C. area. Produced by Jake Hanner (Donora) and Animal Scream, the album will be out in 2023. In the meantime, “Alice” will be out digitally on October 4, while the “Canyon”/“Alice” 45 will be released on Action Weekend Records out of Europe on October 14. 

Keim describes the new singles as a way of reintroducing himself as an artist. “I grew up listening to lots of indie rock and 1,2,3, but then I shifted into the hardcore garage direction,” Keim says. “Now I’m finding my voice as an artist.”  – Zach Schonfeld

PRESS QUOTES

“Opening with a pounding percussive stomp followed by joyous layers of jangling guitar and buoyant melodies, “Alice” feels both heartfelt and endlessly charming, crafting jangly folk pop with lush complexity.” – Under The Radar Magazine

“Zack Keim takes its cues from Buddy Holly, the Kinks, the Stooges, and Dylan.” – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Keim’s voice is unique and pitched up in this jaunty track that seems like it should be laid over a road trip montage. It’s got a vintage rock feel and is full of blazing instrumentation… “Canyon” is an impressive show for Keim as someone in the midst of a redefining moment.” – Pittsburgh City Paper

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OUT NOW: Zack Keim’s new single, “Alice” (a duet with String Machine’s Laurel Wain): https://zackkeim.fanlink.to/alice

TOUR DATES

Zack Keim tour dates

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BIO

When the acclaimed Pittsburgh band 1,2,3 dissolved following the grueling production of 2014’s double LP Big Weather, Chad Monticue and Josh Sickels, who comprised half the group’s lineup, knew they had unfinished business. The result is Animal Scream, a new duo that supplants 1,2,3’s psych-pop psychedelia with a vibe that’s darker and more cinematic, a noir-tinted sound in thrall to the eternal groove. 

On the duo’s second album, Heartbroke Motel, Monticue and Sickels draw on influences as varied as David Lynch, MF DOOM, and ’60s reggae, and carve out nocturnal soundscapes for the alienated and brokenhearted. While their first album as a duo, 2020’s Nightwalk, was indebted to a bottom-heavy constellation of dub and Motown influences — a style the musicians cheekily call “Evil Motown” — Heartbroke Motel is more synth-splattered and cinematic. A friend told the band the album sounded “like gothic Phil Spector,” and it’s as concise a description as you’re apt to get.

Above all, these songs radiate with the ease of collaborators who’ve worked together for a long time. Although the band is new, Animal Scream’s story dates back to their teen years. Growing up outside Pittsburgh in the late ’90s, Monticue and Sickels bonded over The Beatles, punk, and hardcore music. Monticue, who played bass, was deep into Fugazi and Dischord Records; Sickels was a self-described “merch guy” who toured with indie-punk bands. “I was going to shows and he was in heavy bands, and we just met that way,” recalls Sickels. “It’s almost like our musical tastes shifted as we grew up. I went from being a punk rocker, doing front flips off the stage at shows, to smoking weed and listening to Kid A.”

A self-trained drummer with a thunderous, nontraditional style (lesson one: easy on the cymbals; focus on the toms and rims), Sickels has always been the right-hand man to the songwriter in a band. He spent the early 2000s playing in Strokes-y garage-rock bands with singer Nic Snyder. Years later, he and Monticue finally joined forces in the band 1,2,3, with Snyder as their singer. 1,2,3 signed to Frenchkiss and received notice for their psych-damaged 2011 debut New Heaven. The band followed that up with 2014’s polarizing Big Weather and launched their own label, American Hermitage, when Frenchkiss declined to release it. A sprawling concept album, Big Weather was hailed by some and ignored by others, and it presaged the band’s dissolution as Snyder moved back to California. 

It would be half a decade before Monticue and Sickels made another. Life changed. Monticue became a father. Sickels opened a popular pizzeria in Pittsburgh. They rechristened themselves Animal Scream and, as the decade neared its end, recorded a dark and alluring debut, Nightwalk. The album’s sound reflected Monticue’s growing interest in producing, beat-making, and analog synths. Nightwalk was recorded under stressful circumstances — one musician dealing with a devastating breakup, the other trapped in a soul-sucking job — which shaped the narrative of the songwriting, private heartbreak funneled through the lens of surrealistic horror. 

Yet no songwriter could have predicted the horror that would arrive just in time for Nightwalk’s scheduled release date, in April 2020. The world shut down, and the album got delayed. Finally released in July of that year, Nightwalk landed in the seventh spot on the North American College and Community Radio Chart (NACC), but Animal Scream were forced to cancel their substantial touring plans. “We just decided, let’s get back to the lab and start cranking out some more tunes,” says Monticue. 

The resulting album, Heartbroke Motel, was self-produced and recorded over a year and a half in Monticue’s home studio, and mixed by longtime friend Jake Hanner. As the pandemic dragged on — those interminable early months stretching into a year — the album became an outlet for these two musicians to exorcise their pent-up energy and frustrations. “It’s just the two of us,” Sickels says, “and when we get inside the band together, we can just go hog-wild and just do whatever we feel like doing. It’s an explosive creative outlet for us, and we’re really meticulous.”

At a time of extreme emotion, they were drawn to extreme sounds. The opener, “Russians in La Mesa,” bursts open with a wallop of harsh, red-lining synths. Monticue told the mastering engineer to make it sound like Yeezus. “We aren’t afraid to be peaking. We want things to be distorted,” he says.

Groove is central to Heartbroke Motel. “Cannibals” revels in apocalyptic visions over a driving four-on-the-floor thump, while “Heartbroke Motel” examines the record’s core themes of communication and separation over a funky synth workout that’s a kissing cousin of DJ Shadow’s “Organ Donor.” The band favors stacking live drums on top of programmed beats, and Sickels’ deconstructed approach to drumming — often sampling his own drum sounds — colors the band’s recordings. “We’ll create a loop that way. I’ll get a snare sound I like and we just build a drum sound,” Sickels says. “I never sit behind a drum set and just play.”

The duo also embraced nonconventional writing techniques. Monticue recalled reading about Brian Eno’s habit of keeping a tape recorder on him at all times to capture any stray ideas. He began doing the same. “I equate it to trying to capture and unscramble alien signals that quickly hit my brain, and then I’ll kick demos over to Josh so we can collaborate,” Monticue says.

So fruitful were these writing sessions that they also produced a song called “Fires After Dark,” which was omitted from Heartbroke Motel but will be released (alongside the b-side “Cinnamon Blue”) as a 7-inch single in August 2022. “Fires After Dark” is an anthemic rave-up whose roots date back to the fever dream of summer 2020, when riots and protests for racial justice consumed the nation. Monticue wrote the track as an artist’s anthem “about the essence of creating art during twisted up days, even when you feel out of place and at your most insignificant.” 

Above all, Monticue and Sickels wanted to craft a record that would complement the first Animal Scream album — “something a little bit different, but rooted in the same vibe and soundscapes,” as Monticue puts it. “Sister records was the aim.” 

Heartbroke Motel achieves as much, building on Nightwalk’s simmering noir textures, and yet still manages to push Animal Scream to new stylistic extremes. “Wicked Jungle,” with its disembodied traces of a vocal hook, is not like anything these musicians have done before: one half scuzzy industrial groove, one half Kid A-style deconstruction. “The Beast with Two Backs,” meanwhile, is a foreboding, two-part instrumental—redolent of the duo’s love of woozy film scores—with a title that references Shakespeare by way of MF DOOM. Or witness the galloping intensity of “Strangled Up in Two,” a high-octane scorcher whose lyrics take inspiration from The Book of Strange New Things, Michel Faber’s 2014 novel about a Christian missionary on an alien planet.

Such unorthodox inspiration sources are de rigueur for these songwriters—the more nightmarish the better. Some of their songs were inspired by the HBO Asia horror anthology series Folklore; others by hours spent watching supernatural television shows like The Leftovers or Netflix’s bizarro Brand New Cherry Flavor. “Our main influence in this band has been not music,” says Sickels. 

In fact, the duo’s main catalyst in starting the band was the 2017 revival of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, which inspired both musicians to want to create something adventurous and polarizing. “The otherworldly experience of Twin Peaks: The Return’s outlandish editing and filmmaking vision ignited this intoxicating spark of drive and creativity in me that I still can’t quite explain,” Monticue says.

Monticue is a budding screenwriter, and both musicians are devoted horror fans. “It doesn’t even have to be good,” Sickels laughs. “As long as it’s adventurous, we’re into it. It’s like, ‘Holy fuck, what was that visual they threw in?’ Songwriting-wise, that’s the type of stuff we’re into.”

Yet the supernatural dimension of Animal Scream’s music never belies the emotional core underneath. A sense of desolation and loneliness permeates this album. The cover displays a warped image of the house where Sickels once lived. Communication and loss are the weighty themes. “Please don’t come back for me,” Monticue croons on “Forget Your Love,” a sorrowful break-up tune that features mariachi trumpet flourishes by New Orleans musician Josh LeBlanc. 

It’s one of two songs that reference the titular Heartbroke Motel, a mystical place where haunted memories and demons hang out in perpetuity. As Monticue explains it, the title came about as a cheeky bastardization of Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel”: “It’s about love, lost love, things like that. It was meant to be a place where you have all these memories, good or bad. They’re past memories. They’re in this Heartbroke Motel place, where you can move on.”

At the core of Animal Scream’s music is a similar philosophy: that to move on from heartbreak and dissonance, you have to face the horror head-on. Listeners confronting their own heartbroke motel will find this album to be a worthy soundtrack of catharsis. 

– Zach Schonfeld

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Coming Soon

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Conceived in the waters of Arroyo Seco, forged in the Bay Area DIY scene, Lofi Legs is an SF-based rock group writing songs about falling in love, dropping acid, and buying horses. Starry-eyed love ballads share space with rampaging party songs. Formed by Paris Cox-Farr. Joining in recent years Daniel Bromfield on keys, Strummer Millward on bass and Fabrizio incerti on drums forming a rock quartet.

Lofi Legs’ sound proceeds from the gentle folk-pop of streaming hit “Dreamin” while preserving its sonic roots in the fertile San Francisco garage scene that spawned the young foursome. In this world, John Dwyer is the father, Ty Segall is the son, Deerhoof is the holy ghost, and Toro Y Moi is a smiling benevolent den mother.

Lofi Legs is aiming to be to the SF garage scene what Green Day was to East Bay punk: chart infiltrators who will stay true to their roots no matter how far from their home turf they stray. Leg Day is better than Christmas Eve, because Leg Day is forever.

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“Combining garage rock and bedroom pop with psych and surf sensibilities, San Francisco‘s Lofi Legs are out to capture the highs and lows of life.” – Various Small Flames

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Check out Lofi Legs’ new single “Thinking of You” here: https://lofilegs.fanlink.to/thinkingofyou

Check out Lofi Legs’ new single, “My Silence” – the lead single from the bands’ new album, Leg Day (out 2/11 via We Were Never Being Boring Collective): https://lofilegs.fanlink.to/mysilence

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St. Sol is an alchemist, first and foremost. Painting with swirling, textural synthesizers, their shapeshifting music operates outside of genre. In their confessional 2019 debut Amphibian, their focus is pointed deeply inward, prodding and dissecting the melodrama of isolation. In “Lonewolf,” a hazy guitar and lilting percussion set a minimal stage as St. Sol laments, “I see myself in every one/ but no one can find themselves/in the forest of me.” Later in the album, a burning fire of determination comes through in “Watch Me,” a vibrating, bass driven electronic soundscape.The final chorus explodes with the artists belligerent dare, “Watch me glow.”

In 2020 as the world descends to madness, St. Sol finds solace in the dark of the unknown. This project is largely inspired by Thomas W Moore’s  interpretation of the story of Narcissus from a 1976 issue of Parabola Magazine entitled “Magic.” In this interpretation, the Narcissus experience is “to discover a new self-to bring to the surface a formerly hidden potentiality, an altogether new image of oneself.” Whereas Amphibian cleared a path into the unconscious, in Limina, St. Sol dives into it headfirst-triggering and engaging in their own Narcissus experience. 

The five-track EP features “Never Know,” an anthemic meditation on “The Great Unknown” In this song, St. Sol examines their relationship to the truth Narcissus sought in his reflection. The track’s verses contemplate the anxieties of worshipping control, while the bridge embodies the promise of potential in its release, “Now, I see a horizon that’s much farther off/growing pearls from behind my eyes/past the light of the glittering stars”

The EP’s lead single, aptly titled Narcissus follows, and St. Sol’s mutability shines. Rising out of the vestiges of the previous track, Narcissus draws power from its minimal and tense drum and bass landscape. Wearing Narcissus as a hunter, St. Sol balances control and release, coming to the realization that seething through the hushed urgency of their search, the “it” they’ve been looking for is part of them.

“The work that I do stems from a genuine place of exploration” The artist says, “Limina is about this process of coming closer to your core, trusting the path without knowing where you are or where you’re going. It sort of orbits around physical and symbolic death and–for me–builds a new relationship to these very necessary, very feared parts of being alive.”

To coincide with the release of “Narcissus” and Limina, St. Sol (a multi-disciplinary artist) developed an immersive VR music experience for “Narcissus” that explores the parallels between digital space, and the invisible space of the mind. “Narcissus” will be released as Limina’s official single on September 15th, complete with 3D audio, a customizable 360 video version on YouTube, and an experiential VR Screening Party to celebrate its release on September 18th at the Headlong Dance Theater in St. Sol’s native Philadelphia (tickets).

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Coming Very Soon

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Experience St. Sol’s new 360 music for “Narcissus” here: https://StSol.fanlink.to/Narcissus

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