"happily lonely"
Glow is track 3 on Suburban Living's album "How To Be Human" dropping May 22nd (2020) on EggHunt Records. From the onset you are at once transported, carried by heavy bass lines and double time hooky patterns on guitars. The sound is shoegazey and you might have trouble discerning some of the words uttered by Wesley Bunch's long vocal sustains. The feeling is dreamy, the lead guitar wailing, the drum beat pressing forth a powerful charge and the feeling Glow emanates (?), a sense of trouble or conflict and sadness. If you are a child of the 80's or simply have eclectic deep taste in indie music you might think of The Cure, although they may of never sounded this hazy but there are dreamy and dark similarities. Bunch offers thoughts on Glow:
"Some of my favorite memories of my childhood are laying down in my living room floor picking out cds to listen to out of my mom’s very large CD collection. We had some type of subscription that would send you a stack of random CDs for $2 a month. I had no cell phone, no internet, and no friends. I find myself constantly confused at how I grew up to be a somewhat “highly social” person when my childhood was spent mostly in my room playing guitar and avoiding kids my age.
When I wrote "Glow" I wanted to tap into that feeling of being happily lonely. Some of the best moments of my life were when I didn’t own a phone, or felt like I had to interact with anyone. I know technology has made life a million times easier, and the world is a much better place with humanity connected but I still miss those moments. Almost all of my songwriting is based in nostalgia, so moments like these are really special." - Wesley Bunch , lead singer of Suburban Living
I suppose I would never associate happiness and loneliness as emotionally connected but then, I do, for whatever reason, like sad songs. I like the feeling that sadness can offer, some sort of comfort. I feel that comfort in Glow.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
Suburban Living started in Virginia Beach in 2012, but guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter Wesley Bunch has come a long way since. In 2015, PaperCup Music released the band’s self-titled debut album, and Bunch relocated to Philadelphia. There, he added Chris Radwanski (guitar, keys), Mike Cammarata (drums), and Peter Pantina (bass) to his lineup. The next year, the four-piece recorded Almost Paradise (6131 Records) with Jeff Zeigler (Nothing, Kurt Vile, The War on Drugs). So why have three-plus years passed between then and the band’s third album, How to Be Human?
“I never thought it was going to come out,” Bunch says. That’s because, although he wrote the LP over two years ago, a house fire on New Year’s Eve 2018 (shortly after tours with Nothing and Hellogoodbye) changed everything. “My whole life went on hold,” he says.
When Bunch eventually resettled, he took recording cues from his three-month stint touring as bassist for the legendary shoegaze band Swirlies, whose members encouraged him to record digital instruments at home. He then completed How to Be Human at Brian Dale Allen Strouse’s home studio in New Hope, PA and Diamond City Studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Finally, he inked a deal with EggHunt Records, a Virginia label best known for discovering Lucy Dacus.
EggHunt will press 100 How to Be Human LPs on alien-green vinyl (plus a limited number of standard black LPs) to match the album’s UFO-encounter artwork, which directly contrasts its titular theme. Throughout the LP, Bunch tells third-person tales about the commonalities of existence.
“I’d never really had songs that told stories before,” he says, noting that the album’s lush, ‘80s-inspired lead single “Main Street” is “just a story about every city.” Atop the Gothic, Cure-esque roar of “Glow” and the alternately sparkling and scything new wave of “Dirt,” Bunch sings about common poisons, the former about ruinous substance addiction and the latter about excising toxic people. If any of the aliens in the album artwork’s UFO heard these songs, they’d surely know How to Be Human—a lesson that eight years of making music certainly qualifies Bunch to teach.
“I never thought it was going to come out,” Bunch says. That’s because, although he wrote the LP over two years ago, a house fire on New Year’s Eve 2018 (shortly after tours with Nothing and Hellogoodbye) changed everything. “My whole life went on hold,” he says.
When Bunch eventually resettled, he took recording cues from his three-month stint touring as bassist for the legendary shoegaze band Swirlies, whose members encouraged him to record digital instruments at home. He then completed How to Be Human at Brian Dale Allen Strouse’s home studio in New Hope, PA and Diamond City Studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Finally, he inked a deal with EggHunt Records, a Virginia label best known for discovering Lucy Dacus.
EggHunt will press 100 How to Be Human LPs on alien-green vinyl (plus a limited number of standard black LPs) to match the album’s UFO-encounter artwork, which directly contrasts its titular theme. Throughout the LP, Bunch tells third-person tales about the commonalities of existence.
“I’d never really had songs that told stories before,” he says, noting that the album’s lush, ‘80s-inspired lead single “Main Street” is “just a story about every city.” Atop the Gothic, Cure-esque roar of “Glow” and the alternately sparkling and scything new wave of “Dirt,” Bunch sings about common poisons, the former about ruinous substance addiction and the latter about excising toxic people. If any of the aliens in the album artwork’s UFO heard these songs, they’d surely know How to Be Human—a lesson that eight years of making music certainly qualifies Bunch to teach.
No comments:
Post a Comment