Tag: Billy Joel Movin’ Out

Over the course of 2017, I wrote quite a bit about the  San Francisco-born, Los Angeles-based sibling duo Cones, and as you may recall, the duo, which is comprised of Jonathan Rosen, an acclaimed, pop music influenced, hand-drawn animator, who has created music videos for the likes Toro y Moi, Eleanor Friedberger and Delicate Steve,  and played Johnny Thunders on the HBO series Vinyl; and Micheal Rosen, a classically trained pianist, commercial and film composer and experimental sound artist, can trace the origins of the band to when they began playing together as members of New York-based indie rock band Icewater, an act that eventually became the session and touring band for Eleanor Friedberger’s New View. As the story goes, while touring with Friedberger, the Rosens began to conceptualize what their new project would sound like, ultimately deciding that their project would fuse Jonathan’s pop sensibilities with Michael’s lush, atmospheric soundscapes and keyboard-based instrumentation.

After the New View tour ended, the Rosen Brothers along with a collection of friends, associates and collaborators wrote and recorded the material that would comprise their debut EP Whatever You’re Into, which featured the 70s AM radio-like “Echoes On,” and the breezy “Back In The Brain,” an ode to solitude. “Later,” was arguably one of their most dance floor friendly tracks but ironically, was about when someone has begun to find some semblance of peace after a breakup — but with some of the bitterness still hanging around. While “First Time,” found the band nodding towards breezy Pavo Pavo-like bubblegum pop.

Recently, the JOVM mainstays signed to Dangerbird Records and to celebrate that occasion and a Bootleg Theater residency, the sibling duo released their latest single, the shimmering, arpeggiated synth-led “Run the Risk,” a track that decidedly sounds as though it were inspired by Steely Dan and Billy Joel. In particular, “Movin’ Out,” which interestingly enough I mentioned in an earlier post, as well as “Peg” and “Ricky Don’t Lose That Number” come to mind. And while centered around slick production and thoughtful craft, the song continues a run of breezy and sincere material.

Check out their Bootleg Theater Residency dates below.

 

Live Dates

8/06: Bootleg Theater w/ Pavo Pavo, Wolcott’s Instant Pain Annihilator
8/13: Bootleg Theater w/ Lily McQueen, Palm Springsteen
8/16: Taix in the Champagne Room – Echo Park Rising
8/20: Bootleg Theater w/ Malcolm Oliver Perkins, Lisa Sonoda

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Comprised of Nick Rose and Dan Griffin, the Toronto-based pop duo Teen Ravine can trace their origins to a series of apartment-based studio collaborations begun back in the spring of 2016. Since then, the duo has specialized in work that they describe as thematically focusing on  Gen Y’s struggle between the desire for and the fear of intimacy that ironically has explored through material they wrote and recorded in their bedrooms. We all want to get close to another — but not too close, out of a fear of getting hurt, an inability to discern our true desires or for some other more dysfunctional reason. And while the duo claim that it’s a particular struggle for their generation, I can tell you from experience that unfortunately, it’s not; it’s frustratingly part of the human condition.

Rose and Griffin’s full-length debut  is slate, and for release at the end of this month, and the album’s latest single “Bad Dream” sonically draws from 70s AM Rock and late 70s and early 80s singer/songwriter pop centered around a hook-laden, breezy yet soulful arrangement of Rhodes piano, fuzzy synths, a sinuous bass line, propulsive drumming and as a result the song recalls Billy Joel’s heyday — think “Movin’ Out,”  and “Captain Jack,Carole King and list of others.  And much like those songs, the duo’s latest single focuses a bit on seeking comfort and pleasure in sadness, because — well, it’s yours; but underneath that is the sense that the song’s narrator has spent his time obsessively picking at emotional scabs until they’re left raw and oozing, instead of taking time to let them heal in any significant way.