Comprised of Haley Bonar (vocals); Jeremy Ylvisaker (guitar and synths), a member of The Cloak Ox, Alpha Consumer and a member of Andrew Bird‘s backing band; Mark Erickson (bass), Ylvisaker’s bandmate in The Cloak Ox; Luke Anderson (drums and drum machines), a member of Rogue Valley; and Jacob Hanson (guitar and synths). a member of Actual Wolf, All Tomorrow’s Petty and Haley Bonar’s backing band, the Minneapolis, MN-based quartet Gramma’s Boyfriend are a collection of the Minneapolis area’s most accomplished indie musicians, who together specialize in a sound that they’ve dubbed psychedelic dance punk. It’s a sound that apparently draws from influences such as DEVO, Blondie, Suburban Lawns and Dead Kennedys and it’s specifically crafted to make you want to get off your ass and move.
“Forget The Stones,” the first single from the Minneapolis-based quintet’s forthcoming debut effort PERM consists of throbbing and urgent bass chords, swirling and quivering synth chords, four-on-the-floor drumming, some electronic drum programming thrown in, shimmering guitars fed through reverb and other distortion pedals paired with Bonar’s ethereal vocals to create a sound that obviously draws from shoegaze rock like RIDE and others but manages to be subtly more propulsive. It’s not as obviously dance-floor ready as I would have expected, as it possesses a swooning trance-like feel. It also subtly pushes shoegaze into new sonic territory with the addition of synths and drum machines, much like contemporaries Presents for Sally. Look for the album when Graveface Records releases it on October 9.