Every Wednesday, the ugly hug shares a playlist personally curated by an artist/band that we have been enjoying. This week we have a collection of songs put together by Brooklyn-based artist Renny Conti.
Last month, Renny released his beloved self-titled album, one in which the songwriter has been working on and compiling for the past couple of years. With a keen eye for observational obscurity, these songs brush open the curtains to a world unfiltered to the warmth, heartbreak, trauma and humorous oddities that make life so unique. Following his release, we asked Renny to make a playlist, in which he shares;
These are some of my most favorite songs that I’ve found in the past few years. They’ve inspired me to play and be vulnerable in my music and I can always turn to these artists and songs for both guidance and clarity.
Listen to Renny’s playlist here.
You can listen to Renny Conti out everywhere now.
Written by Shea Roney | Featured Photo Courtesy of Renny Conti
Today, Bedridden announced that their debut LP, Moths Strapped to Each Other’s Backs will be out on Aprill 11th via Julia’s War. Hatched by Jack Riley in his college years in New Orleans, Bedridden is now a Brooklyn based project, joined by drummer Nicholas Pedroza, bassist Sebastian Duzian and guitarist Wesley Wolffe. The individual members boast backgrounds ranging from jazz to metal, these influences subtly feeding the identity and rapport built over a shared proclivity for volume. Bedridden accompanied the album announcement with the release of “Etch”, a track both promising for those fond of their 2023 release Amateur Hearthrob and sure to dredge up new listeners. The rhythmically dense EP is sort of like if Friday Night Lights had a sludgy power pop soundtrack, wrapping notions of home runs and cheek kisses from cheerleaders in a sea of angsty guitar. It wields enough fuzz to form a foreboding cloud of grunge, but not enough to sand down any rough edges. Bedridden’s apt for animated riffs and sports novelties merely exist as a padding for the loneliness and anxieties that trickle out of their seemingly unguarded arenas of noise.
“Etch” is a wrathful track that explores the burdens of one’s own rage, armed with brooding guitar harmonies and scatterings of sports vernacular. It purges interpersonal animosities as Riley recalls a victorious fight dream, his vocals dodging harmony as he pummels through lines of “meet my knuckles” and “he can’t breathe, he can’t see without his eyewear”. Though the dream follows his rules, meandering in and out of NBA references and ending with the sweet satisfaction of the antagonist warming his own bench, there is an ambiguity to “Etch” that feels familiar whether or not you have access to any sports channels. The erratic and combative feel evoked by the song’s lack of a tonal center recalls an innately human kind of anger, an overwhelm that can sometimes only be soothed by aggressive figments of our own imagination.
In a statement about the track, Riley shares “‘Etch’ was a rhythmic accident that didn’t stem from any direct inspiration. The irregular triplet line came to me first and sounded somber, yet hostile. It lent itself well to phrases I had written not about heartbreak, but about the subsequent temper that it had induced. I was dreaming of fighting, I was dreaming of winning that fight and lastly dreaming of defaming my competitor. The song is frantic and doesn’t have a tonal center. With its weaving guitar harmonies laid underneath countering vocal melodies, it sounds to me like that regretful fistfight that I was longing for.”
Listen to “Etch” here.
Moths Strapped To Each Other’s Backs is set to be released April 11th via Julia’s War Recordings. You can now pre-order the album as well as a cassette tapes now.
Written by Manon Bushong | Featured Photo by Sam Plouff
Every Wednesday, the ugly hug shares a playlist personally curated by an artist/band that we have been enjoying. This week we have a collection of songs put together by Brooklyn-based artist Emily Borrowman of the project smush.
Venturing through intimate begrudgements and giddy culminations of longing, smush set out to find a sense of peace within the noise on their debut record if you were here i’d be home now released earlier this year. Along with Emily, the gushing sound of smush comes from Atley King and Jay Christie, as the trio create a motion deliberate in each of their voicings, punctuating each grating texture and sonic manipulation that gives way to the tenderness in Emily’s vocals and the euphoria trapped within the swaying stamina of each song.
Titled “sensitive girl: did you lose yourself again”, Emily shared this statement about the playlist;
a playlist for the sensitive girl. 40 songs, 2 hours and 19 minutes of music for the melancholy heart, the nostalgic daughter, the princess and the pea. find yourself alone and yearning. featuring deep cuts and familiar faces, these songs pair well with glow in the dark stars, lace curtains, and slingshots. you’re a collector of promises, and so am i. listen with your bleeding heart on your sleeve.
“i’ve been searching for an hour in my closet / trying to figure out what to wear / for a day i’ll spend alone in my room”
Day of Snow, Skullcrusher.
Listen to Emily’s playlist here.
You can listen to if you were here i’d be home now out on all platforms. Purchase a cassette tape here.
Every Wednesday, the ugly hug shares a playlist personally curated by an artist/band that we have been enjoying. This week we have a collection of songs put together by Brooklyn-based artist Dan Poppa of the project People I Love.
People I love exudes an undeniable nostalgic warmth while Dan achieves a level of intensity with the most gentle vocals, crafts profound narratives in very few words, and constructs memorable melodies through minimal and haunting instrumental arrangements. In part because of Dan’s status as a bedroom pop veteran with other projects like waveform* and Lola Star, there is a certain lived-in quality to his voice and a familiar honesty to the way he makes music. Packaging aching lyrics of “hit me like a brick” and “waiting to bleed by you” into melancholic lullabies, the 2024 self titled People I Love album is a tender diary of yearning met with eerie lo-fi chords, balancing raw beauty with a lingering cloud of darkness, and distilling Dan’s thoughts into some of his most vulnerable work yet.
Listen to Dan’s playlist here:
Following the release of the self titled album earlier this year, Dan recently shared a new single called “Trader’s Log”. Check out those releases as well as the rest of the extensive People I Love catalog below.
Written by Manon Bushong | Photo given with permission from Dan Poppa
Today, Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Avery Friedman shares her long awaited debut single, “Flowers Fell”. Having frequented bills with artists such as Sister. and Dead Gowns for the past year, Friedman has consistently left an impression on those that have caught her sets, oftentimes performing solo, creating a space in which her vivid imagery and tender melodies greet new ears with welcome and understanding. Produced by James Chrisman (Sister.) and with contributions from Felix Walworth (Told Slant, Florist), “Flowers Fell” plays to the in-between moments as Friedman defines new beginnings.
Photo by Mamie Heldman
“Flowers Fell” begins in a reverberated haze, rearing guitars and diluted vocals hold their breath, awaiting that very first line that Friedman drives out— “The flowers fell off when I was asleep / But it’s okay ’cause now its all green” — blindsided, but not disappointed. Soon the chorus becomes definite, Friedman’s vocals wield both strength and tenderness as the melody leads with its whole chest and instrumentation follows in a potent groove. “How long can you mourn for something that was always supposed to blossom into something stronger?” Friedman asks in a statement — a combination of both grief and vitality. As the song begins to close out, the ghosts of distortion and the swarming of sonic fixations underneath begin to blend, holding the surrounding static accountable as a full picture begins to clear up.
“Flowers Fell” is accompanied by a music video, directed, filmed, VFX, and handwritten lyrical text by Nara Avakian. Watch it here.
You can stream “Flowers Fell” on all platforms now.
“The first two years that we were performing,” Beckerman recalls, “the nerves were pretty unmanageable before every single performance because I had the worst stage fright,” a level of exhaustion still remnant in the corners of these memories as she speaks. “But I feel like I’m finally getting to the point where I’m not getting butterflies just from waking up that whole week before I perform — I’ve grown a lot, thank goodness.”
Daneshevskaya is the project of Brooklyn-based artist, Anna Beckerman, whose namesake derives from her own middle name, one in which she shares with her great-grandmother. Having since released her debut album, Long Is The Tunnel late last year via New York label Winspear, an album in which presence and perspective become intertwined within her own story, Beckerman’s writing has always been one to cherish self-discovery. As she continues in her career, “the more I write lyrics, the more I get closer to what I’m really trying to say,” she conveys, speaking towards her practice. “I don’t know what it is I’m trying to say, but I think I’m getting closer.”
Today, Daneshevskaya returns with “Scrooge”, the first bit of new music since Long Is The Tunnel and a revitalization of an earlier song she recorded and released under the project name back in 2018. Fractured by the cruelty of romantics, Beckerman and collaborators set a benchmark for retainment, where stillness isn’t an option as melodies coincide and collapse, strings gasp at the vivid imagery at hand and playful keys tiptoe around as if not to disturb the surface. Although the lyrics have not seen any changes – the emotion still fervent and raw – “Scrooge” becomes a moment of admiration for what was left untouched, while still recognizing how far she has come since.
The ugly hug recently sat down with Beckerman to discuss “Scrooge”, looking past the “cringe” of earlier works, and what she has learned from an openly collaborative career.
Photo by Madeline Leshner
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Shea Roney: I can’t believe it has already been a year since Long Is The Tunnel was released. Are you still riding the high from the attention that album received?
Anna Beckerman: I get so much anxiety from releasing and promoting music that I feel like it took me a while after it was released to be like, ‘oh, wait, I’m proud of that! I’m excited, and I’m proud.’ It’s so crazy to make music and then see people I don’t know posting stuff about it and telling other people to listen to it – so it took me some time to get over myself and enjoy what I had made.
SR: You have a new single called “Scrooge”, which is actually a newly recorded version of an older song released a handful of years ago. What made you want to return to this song now?
AB: Yes, it was released back in 2018. We had worked on the song and I think we submitted to maybe a hundred SubmitHubs or whatever, and got like a hundred rejections. We always really liked it though, I remember being really proud of it. We all saw that we had this opportunity to re-record the parts of it that always bothered us and give it another go and see if it would reach more people, especially now that we have more support releasing it. Going into it, we knew we wouldn’t record it that same way now, where it had been done kind of chopped up and with different people, so it was nice to get to make it in the way that felt right, and work with the people who I wanna work with.
SR: Although it is a fairly older song, do you feel like it still resonates with you on that same level?
AB: I feel like my whole life has been making stuff and then looking back on it a few years later and thinking, ‘I can’t believe I ever thought that was cool’ [laughs]. I can’t imagine having as much access to showing people things as kids have now. I was making the stupidest, most indulgent, disconnected and self absorbed stuff, but showing it to no one because there was nothing to do with it. Oh, God, the YouTube videos I would have to look back on if I had had that kind of access back then. But that being said, it was convenient that it was the first thing I ever made and somehow I don’t look back on it and think that I would never make this now. I probably would make something like that still, or even, maybe I’ll never make something like that again, because it was something I did, and now it’s done. But I still have a lot of respect for it, and the lyrics don’t make me cringe, which is a true test.
SR: I fully believe you need those cringy moments though. Little testaments to keep yourself in check.
AB: Oh, yeah, you gotta remind yourself [laughs]. I also took a bunch of poetry classes in college, and I feel like the whole point of those workshops is to just make cringy stuff. Sometimes I do go back and read what I wrote when I was a freshman in college, and I just think, ‘…oh.’
Photo by Madeline Leshner
SR: You have always written with such vivid imagery, but this song feels unique, in that it deals with varying moments of proximity and presence. You build this focus from a very intimate lens that feels very hands on, yet you manage to create this growing distance between yourself and “Scrooge”. Was this a challenging feat when writing, and why did you want to tell the story this way?
AB: I think in general, when I listen to music, I really like lyrics that are kind of familiar, but also feel strange. When writing this song, I was just really sad [laughs], so when I have a loss or something leaves my life, I feel like I have a rush to write things down so that I remember. A lot of the first EP, Bury Your Horses, I was dealing with how weird it is to know someone and then not know them anymore, and how that is such a bizarre feeling, even more so than feeling something sad or melancholy – I just feel like it’s so weird. I don’t know, my brain just couldn’t really wrap around it, so I feel like the lyrics are a way for me to put it all out there and just be okay that it’s weird.
SR: The character himself, Ebenezer Scrooge, is textbook villain, but is also a very dynamic character. What was the inspiration of choosing him as a placeholder for someone you knew personally?
AB: Part of it was that it fit into the amount of syllables that I needed [laughs]. I wish that there was a more interesting explanation, but I just thought of the first thing that comes to mind when I think of a villain, or someone who’s just clearly a bad guy, even though I was kind of aware while I was in it that this person isn’t actually bad, even though I was so upset and hurt – it almost felt fake.
SR: EB-EN-EZ-ER.
AB: Yeah, it has more syllables than most other villains. What’s that one? Thanos? That’s not good. And it was interesting, because the chorus of the song I had written before my breakup was about being with someone, and then seeing them from a different lens and then feeling that distance from them. And then we broke up, and I was like, ‘no, this still applies [laughs], it still works. I still feel what I said.’
SR: Did you find yourself grappling with the honesty of persevering those feelings that this relationship brought out while writing this song?
AB: I always struggle with being scared that my lyrics will be too specific and they’ll end up seeming precious or something. But I also don’t want things to be so vague that they don’t resonate with people because they’re not specific enough. I was also really angry when I wrote this song and the song itself obviously isn’t – it’s very ‘La la’ indie folk, so it doesn’t come across super angry. But I always loved the Elliott Smith songs where he’s really angry but it’s kind of a cute song, and it takes a few listens to be like, ‘oh, you’re really pissed right now.’ It’s like a little bit of that, and also just thinking that if this person hears this song, maybe only they’ll know that I’m angry. Everyone else might think it’s a cutesy song, but the person who I wrote it about will know that I’m angry. In that way I was trying to be honest.
SR: Your work up to this point has been a very communal effort, bringing in a lot of friends to help contribute and create this rather spiritual effect in your music. What kinds of things have you learned from your collaborators that you hold dear to your heart as you go on?
AB: First of all, nothing I’ve ever done in music I could have done without the amazing musicians all around me who can do everything. I’m very aware of how lucky I am to have people I get to make music with, and who genuinely want to be doing it. I think that’s the only thing that has kept me in music for so long now. That being said, the best thing you can get from someone giving you feedback is not always the feedback, but the way that they look at music as what sticks with you. The next time you make music, you’ll have a little voice in your head of one person saying ‘maybe you could try a different voicing’, and then there’s another person saying, ‘do you need that many words?’ All of those voices are me, but they’re also a product of the people that I have worked with through the years.
Watch the music video for “Scrooge”, directed by Madeline Leshner, here.
“Scrooge” was made with the help of co-collaborators Madeline Leshner, Artur Szerejko and produced by Marcus Paquin (The Weather Station, The National, Julia Jacklin). You can now stream it on all platforms.
Daneshevskaya will be headlining Brooklyn’s Baby’s All Right on Friday, December 13th. Get tickets here.
Growing up in Eau Claire, WI, Adelyn Strei is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who has spent the last decade expanding and defining her rich and improvisational type of folk music, mainly through arranging and performing her friend’s music and releasing under her previous moniker, Adelyn Rose. Now based in Brooklyn, Strei is preparing to release her new record, Original Spring, set to be released November 15. Today, she shares the third and final single before the release, “Clouds In Your Eyes”.
Bare, yet empathetic, “Clouds In Your Eyes” builds upon the opportunity of open spaces. As tinged guitar strings rattle and a sullen piano begins to find its voice, step-by-step, new textures form underneath Strei’s footing as they play out with gradual depth. “To know her was to love her / To love her was the natural way”, she sings, candid and clear, holding on to every word with thoughtful phrasing and cherished presence. Carefully, amongst ghostly echoes, tempered effects and a flurry of woodwinds, vivid and unique – like the song’s natural plumage – she repeats, “Sun in the shadows and / Clouds in your eyes / You say to let it”, gradually fading into that same open space where it began.
About the single, Strei shares, “Clouds In Your Eyes’ completes the 48 minute arc of the album. The guitar and drums together have a determined resolve, carrying lyrics about loss, but the kind of loss that feels like wonder and gratitude,” she continues, “[it’s] very much a feet on the ground/eyes on the sky kind of song.”
Today, Adelyn Strei shares a music video for “Clouds In Your Eyes”. Watch it here.
Original Spring is set to be released this Friday, November 15th via Brooklyn’s Mtn. Laurel Recording Co. and produced by Dex Wolfe. You can pre-save Original Springhere.
Every Wednesday, the ugly hug shares a playlist personally curated by an artist/band that we have been enjoying. This week, we have a collection of songs put together by Brooklyn-based artist, Iris James Garrison of Bloomsday.
Earlier this year, Bloomsday put out their critically acclaimed sophomore record, Heart of the Artichoke, an album that lives in its connections, creating an honest and clear silhouette of Garrison’s presence while also documenting a keepsake; the community that Garrison has surrounded themselves with to bring their music to its truest from yet.
“I was so nervous it was just going to sound like a collection of songs? In hindsight…what the hell does that even mean?” Victoria Winter reflects in between sips of chai tea.
We are having the age-old ‘what makes a record’ conversation. It’s a topic that leaves room for hours of discourse, but for New York based Shower Curtain’s debut album, the answer is relatively straightforward. Titled as an ode to the band’s journey, governed equal parts by fate and Winter’s deep sense of intuition, words from a wishing well marks the promising start for Shower Curtain’s synergetic future as a four-piece rock band. “I also don’t want a record with songs that all kind of sound the same. I had forgotten that, no matter what, it still has this unspoken identity that is ours”, Winter declares, putting the subject to rest.
The unspoken identity she speaks of is a strong one, one you trust and one that leaves you wanting more. A certain tenderness in Winter’s vocals paired with vulnerable slices of internal dialogue salute her bedroom pop roots, while a new presence of heavily layered instrumentals eulogize Shower Curtain’s days as a solo project. Now joined by Ethan Williams (guitar / vocals), Sean Terrell (drums), and Cody Hudgins (bass), words from a wishing well is a stunning journal of internal roadblocks, some easy to articulate and others leaning more into the abstract.
Wilting thoughts of “I can’t be on my own” and “I’m always falling apart” are intensified by fervent guitar riffs on “take me home”. On “benadryl man” the suffocations of nocturnal anxieties manifest as a figure on Winter’s ‘velvet purple couch’, blanketed in eerie, staticky distortions. The album wraps with “edgar”, where the stinging in Winter’s vocals compete with heavy chord progressions to deliver a story of grief you feel in the depths in your chest.
At times honoring the noise-driven, sludgy guitar tropes of 90s shoegaze, at times experimenting with electronic production styles, there is an essence of Shower Curtain’s newly formed collaborative personality seeping into every track.
I sat down with Winter and Williams last week to discuss Shower Curtain’s compelling visuals, their upcoming tour, and words from a wishing well, out everywhere today via Angel Tapes / Fire Talk Records.
This Interview has been edited for length and clarity
Manon Bushong: You’ve been making music since 2018, but words from a wishing well is Shower Curtain’s debut album. Did you always intend for these songs to exist as an album, and how did the process of creating them vary from Shower Curtain’s prior singles and EPs?
Winter: This is the first time that Shower Curtain is really doing things as a band, before it was more just me alone for fun. I would say this album definitely marks being in New York, being collaborative, and just having a more solid group of individuals and contributions. I always did want to make a record, but it’s kind of hard to navigate the music landscape. One hand, people tell you, “fuck albums, you need to be doing singles and EPs until you’re big enough”, but then, no label is gonna wanna work with you if you don’t have a record. So as a small indie band, you’re kind of like, ‘okay, what should I do?’ So we kind of went back and forth and then kind of just kept as we wrote, which I don’t feel like we’ll ever do again.
Williams: We’re not going to do that again. There were like, maybe four or five songs when we started recording it. So we were like, well, let’s start making an EP and see what happens. And then it just took so long that then there were like four or five more songs that we had and we were like, just re-recording them as we wrote. So it wasn’t necessarily the plan, but it wasn’t not the plan, you know?
Winter: I definitely felt in my heart, even though we went back and forth, that I always wanted to prove myself and make a record. I work as a designer in the music industry too, so I see a lot of vinyls and really wanted to have that for us as well. I’m like an album person in general.
Williams: I’m an album person too. It’s easier to create more of a cohesive artistic vision that way.
I really enjoy the album’s structure, and I noticed you included a more electronic track, “tell u (interlude)”, in between two heavier songs. When it came to producing, which I know you both do as well, did you feel like creating an album pushed you to think a bit more alternatively there?
Williams: I mean, we made it in my basement. So once we had recorded everything, or towards the end of having recorded everything, we thought about how to make it sound more like an album and not just a bunch of songs that we wrote over the course of two years. So we added some stuff in between and tried to create some motifs, it wasn’t planned from the get go, but it made it feel like more of a finished thing to us.
Winter: I had been really nervous, I used to say to Ethan “ugh, it’s just gonna sound like a collection of songs”, this is not gonna sound like a record. Now in hindsight, I’m like, what the hell does that even mean? Why was I so stressed about that? “tell u (interlude)” was the last thing we made, and by that point I had kind of gotten over myself because at the end of the day, I also don’t want a record with songs that all kind of sound the same. I had forgotten that, no matter what, it still has this unspoken identity that is ours.
All of the visuals for this project have been super sweet. I really like the cover art, the semi distorted pink photo of you all in the woods really matches the album’s sound. Could you discuss that a bit?
Winter: All the visuals are kind of my brainchild, whereas, the music has been way more collaborative. The actual album cover, I wanted to put a lot of thought into because that is something that matters a lot to me, I remember album covers more than their names. I was graduating from Parsons for Graphic Design, and I had the record be my final thesis, and so a lot of consideration went into it, and brainstorming if we were a color, what would it be? I wouldn’t say we are pink, but we definitely aren’t blue, or purple, or green. I went on this journey, I thought about certain descriptors for the songs, like ‘textured’ and ‘heavy’, but also ‘emotional’ and ‘sensitive’. Just really considering how close an album cover can get to what you’re about to listen to, I put a lot of thought into that and the name.
For the name you chose words from a wishing well, what was the meaning there?
Winter: So much of how I move through life and with the band is with these very intuitive and esoteric beliefs, so being in tune with ourselves is extremely important. That’s the main motif behind the title, this idea that when you really want something, the wishing well talks to you.
Sometimes it’s just not the right moment, and not everything that you wish is going to come true. But I do believe that if it doesn’t happen in a moment, later on you’ll think, ‘I’m so happy that it didn’t’. I feel like a lot of the lyrics are about how I am as a person. Whereas the title, I wanted it to be about the story of how the band came together.
When you mentioned that balance of cute and creepy, I immediately thought of the music video you put out for “benadryl man”, which features some very sweet bunnies, but also edited at a pace that feels a bit eerie. How did that project come to be, and what do you prioritize when creating music videos ?
Winter: Sean the drummer, made those bunnies with his girlfriend, Kati, for an exhibition. When I saw the bunny with the painted flames, I thought ‘oh my god, this would be such a sick album cover’. I knew I wanted to use that bunny for something, and Kati likes a lot of similar stuff, like small objects, tinted glass, and metals – she’s a visual artist. So I asked her to set up a stage for the bunnies and then I went to Mother of Junk and got a bunch of miniature random items. Then Cody showed me this guy, Matt, who makes animations, which was also a crazy coincidence because a bunch of people from my city in Brazil followed him. Turns out he is Brazilian and knows a lot of people that I know from my hometown. So, he actually edited all the spooky, crazy shit his own way, and added his own spin on it.Then, the music video for bedbugs is a horror film-noir. When I work with people for a video, I’m just like, ‘I really don’t want it to be too cute and twee’, but I want it so you can tell it’s a girl making it. Kind of a female gaze, not necessarily cute and with this aspect of moodiness to it.
Do either of you have a favorite song off the album to perform, or just in general?
Winter: Personally, I think “bedbugs” is my favorite and “you’re like me”. And then for performing live, Edgar is my favorite.
Williams: I think my favorite ones to play are “you’re like me” and “star power”.
Winter: Ooh, yeah. And from the record?
Williams: Maybe also those. Yeah, I don’t know, I like the parts that I play, which is kind of egotistical to say, but they’re just fun
Apart from the release of words from a wishing well, is there anything else exciting on Shower Curtain’s horizon that you would like to shout out?
Winter: We’re having our New York City record release show on November 13th. It’s going to be a ‘Stereogum Presents’ and it’ll be with Many Shiny Windows, My Transparent Eye, and a Special Guest we can’t announce yet. Then we’re going on tour in two weeks, which I’m really excited about. Then I want to come back from tour and record new stuff.
Williams: I’m excited to go to New Orleans and Chicago. Those are two of my favorite cities in general. I just love going on tour, it’s like a little rock and roll circus. You know, driving around Oklahoma and Kansas feeling like a cowboy. I’m just excited to do that.
words from a wishing well can now be streamed on all platforms. You can purchase a vinyl or cassette of the album via Angel Tapes / Fire Talk Records here. You can purchase tickets to Shower Curtain’s upcoming album release show at TV Eye in New York here.
Every Wednesday, the ugly hug shares a playlist personally curated by an artist/band that we have been enjoying. This week, we have a collection of songs put together by Brooklyn-based group Nara’s Room.
Through the deliberation of sifting noise and strong lyrical intuitions, Nara’s Room has always circulated around the production of dreams and the reverie towards real life environments that front-person Nara Avakian so vividly samples from the day to day. Gearing up for their new EP, Glassy star, Nara’s Room has become a standout group here at the ugly hug, leaving your soul crunched and your ears tender, but in no way deterred by the experimental spirit and sincerity of the artists at hand.
About the playlist, Nara shared;
This is essentially what is playing in my room when people are over, or when I’m in the passenger seat of the car. The songs I added to the playlist are songs that have stuck with me for a long time. My bandmates Brendan and Ethan and our producer James added some songs too because they inspired the sound of the record as much as I did. I asked them to add songs that they found themselves referencing when we were writing and recording. Stuff they’d play in their rooms that made them want to pick up their instruments.
Glassy star is set to be released this Friday October 18 via Mtn. Laurel Recording Co. Nara’s Room will be playing an EP release show at Baby’s All Right on November 4th along with Mtn. Laurel label mates Sister. as well as Told Slant. Get tickets here.
Written by Shea Roney | Cyanotype by mamie heldman
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