Tag: Meatbodies

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Meatbodies Share Groovy “Billow”

Over the course of the past decade or so, Los Angeles-born and-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Chad Ubovich has developed a reputation as a highly-sought after collaborator and mainstay of his hometown’s fertile music scene: Ubovich had a lengthy stint playing guitar in Mikal Cronin‘s backing band. He currently plays bass in Fuzz with  Ty Segall and Charlie Moothart. And he’s also the founding member and frontman of the experimental noise rock/freak rock outfit  Meatbodies.

By 2017, Ubovich reached a crossroads. After years of increasingly insane shows in front of heaving crowds with an ever-evolving and rotating door of personal, fatigue had taken its toll, and he realized that another change was just on the horizon. “It was like the car had run out of gas in the middle of the road, and I knew I had along walk ahead of me,” Ubovich recalls. He retreated to Los Angeles’ seedy underbelly — in search of meaning and a much-needed reset. But Ubovich gradually escaped into that world, ignoring his own physical and mental well-being, licking his wounds and trying to forget his successes. “I was living like a 90’s vampire out of a comic book. Stumbling around LA with the socialites, partying away my sorrows, trying to forget,” the Los Angeles-born and-based artist explains. 

Around this time, the material that would eventually comprise Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom, a project conceived and written by a man searching for new beginnings and his own sense of self. After getting sober, writing sessions began at Ubovich’s home and various studios with longtime collaborator Dylan Fujioka (drums). The official production for the album began back in 2019, but due to discrepancies with the studio and high tensions, the plug was pulled. With only about half an album, it seemed that Flora was shelved — perhaps permanently. 

After some time away, cooler heads eventually prevailed and there were many discussions about the album’s future. Ubovich finally got the green light to finish production on Flora back in 2020. But he hit another snag — the COVID-19 pandemic. And with everyone’s lives and plans at a forced, indefinite halt, so did the idea of Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom. 

Not wanting to sit still at home, Ubovich began combing through his previous demos with Fujioka while writing for Flora. And through those efforts, came Meatbodies’ third album, 2021’s 333. However, Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom was never far from his mind, and he once against resisted the idea of completing the album. 

As restrictions were gradually lifted, Ubovich along with engineer Ed Mentee and a team of colleagues and friends, headed to Los Angeles-based Gold Diggers Sound to complete the album. But he now faced a new crisis, one that was more dire and terrifying than anything he had faced before: The home he had spent the past eight years in had been deemed uninhabitable and he wound up spending the next month of his life in a hospital bed. 

Having to not only learn to walk again but also learn to play again, Ubovich used an upcoming tour with FUZZ as a motivating factor and hit the road for a year trying to regain a sense of normalcy. By the time he returned from that tour, he felt centered, energized and ready to conquer his own white whale – Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom. 

Armed with a new home and a new studio, The Secret Garden, Ubovich mixed the album himself, recruited Magic Garden’s Brian Lucey to master the material — and finally Flora was completed, five years after those original demos with Fujioka. “A lot happened with this record – it took me five years, I was out of a band, I had a drug problem, the album almost didn’t happen, the pandemic made it almost not happen again, and then in the end I almost died in the hospital, lost my house, and had to learn to walk again. It’s been quite a road, but I could not be more thrilled with the final output. I guess the juice was worth the squeeze?” laughs the Meatbodies frontman.

Slated for a March 8, 2024 release through In The Red Records, Flora Ocean Tiger Bloomis in many ways a story of iron clad will and steely determination. Sonically, Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom is a massive step forward, both by conventional standards and considering its tumultuous path towards completion. The album reportedly recalls the Blue Cheer-meets-Iggy Pop-wtih-psychedelia that permeated the band’s previous releases, but with elements of shoegaze, alternative rock, Brit Pop, drone and even hints of country — without ever sounding forced or alien. But the album sees Ubovich crafting an eclectic yet unmistakably cohesive work. 

Thematically, the material touches upon love and loss, escapism, defeatism, hedonism, psychedelics and much more — informed by Ubovich’s own life. “The last record was more of a cartoon version of who we were– simple and fun without delving into heavy concepts,” recalls Ubovich. “The whole thing before with Meatbodies was never sit down, next part, next part, but I wanted to make something with more depth. After everything that had happened, and my personal life, I was left with this feeling of emptiness and loss. So I wanted to make music that was absent from things– songs that were more about conveying feeling.”

So far, Ubovich has shared two singles off the forthcoming album:

  • The Siamese Dream-like Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom album track “Hole,” a song that saw the Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist and his collaborators pairing fuzzy power chord-driven hooks and choruses with his dreamily yearning falsetto and a driving groove. The result was a song that will appeal to shoegazers while featuring enough guitar pyrotechnics for headbangers while possessing a power pop-like emphasis on melody.  “That was one of the first songs I wrote, and I think it’s really indicative of that time,” says Ubovich. “How I was thinking and feeling and what I wanted to accomplish with this LP before I even knew it.”

  • The Sonic Praise-era Ecstatic Vision-like “Move,” which clocks in at 7:30 and begins with a circular synth baseline before quickly morphing into a menacing, krautrock-inspired motorik groove and ending with a lysergic-fueled, power chord-driven coda. “I wanted to make a hypnotic driving song that felt kind of dangerous,” Ubovich says. “There’s an energy to it that is undeniable.” 

“Billow,” Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom‘s third and latest single is built around a spacey Stone Roses-meets-Ritual De Lo Habitual-era Jane’s Addiction-like motorik groove, gently buzzing guitars, relentless tambourine and layers of dreamy, reverb-drenched harmonies paired with some remarkably catchy hooks and choruses. It’s arguably one of the brightest, more optimistic songs on the album, seemingly evoking a pleasant psilocybin trip on a sunny, summer afternoon.

The accompanying video by CAU plays with 120 Minutes-era MTV music video tropes and captures the band goofing off and rocking out with mischievous abandon.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Meatbodies’ New Scorching Ripper “Cancer”

Over the course of the past decade, Los Angeles-born and-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Chad Ubovich has developed and honed a reputation as a key mainstay of one of the country’s most fertile and important music scenes: Ubovich had a lengthy stint playing guitar in Mikal Cronin’s backing band and he’s currently contributing bass with Ty Segall and with Charlie Moothart and as a member of Fuzz. Additionally, the founding member and frontman of his own band, the experimental noise rock/freak rock outfit Meatbodies.

Meatbodies’ latest effort 333 was officially released today through In The Red Records. The album, which features corrosive bangers, raw acoustic rave-ups and primitive electronics, charts Ubovich’s personal journey from drug-induced darkness to clear-eyed sobriety — while simultaneously reflecting on how the world he re-entered was still pretty messed up — if not more so. “I’d been touring for eight years straight with all these bands, and just couldn’t do it anymore,” Ubovich recalls. “There was also a feeling in the air that everything was changing, politically. Things just didn’t feel right, and I went down a dark path.” Ubovich adds, “These lyrics are dark, but I think these are things that a lot of people are feeling and going through. Here in America, we’re watching the fall of U.S. capitalism, and 333 is a cartoonish representation of that decline.” 

Fortunately Ubovich was able to pull himself back from the brink and upon getting sober, began writing and recording material at a furious and impassioned pace. By late 2019, the band — Ubovich and Dylan Fujoka (drums) — had a new album in the can, ready to be mixed. Much like countless other artists, the pandemic forced the band to put their record on hold.

With some newfound downtime, Ubovich discovered a cache of demos that he and Fujoka recorded in a bedroom during the summer of 2018. As it turns out, Ubovcih really liked what he heard. Unlike their established full-band attack, the demos were deliriously disordered. Ironically, because 333’s material found the band working within a much tighter lo-fi aesthetic, the restriction allowed them to open space for more free-ranging experimentation. While speaking of the disillusionment of a lost generation, the album’s material is sparked by the innovation that limited resources and moxie can inspire.

333’s latest single “Cancer” is an expansive mosh pit ripper centered around scorching power chords driven riffage, thunderous drumming and mantra-like lyrics. While on one hand, the song superficially seems nihilistic, the song is fueled by a celebration — albeit of very small things.

The Josh Erkman-directed video for “Cancer” is a fittingly trippy visual split between the members of the band in the studio, shot in a hallucinogenic haze and two costumed men riffing out in front of a camp fire in the middle of nowhere.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Arguably best known as the guitarist in Mikal Cronin‘s backing band and the bassist in Fuzz, Chad Ubovich is part of the larger Bay Area/Ty Segall/Thee Oh Sees universe and over the past couple of years, Ubovich has received attention for his own band Meatbodies, a band that features Ubovich, Patrick Nolan and Kevin Boog playing incredibly weird, scuzzy lo-fi rock. Now, if you had been frequenting this site last month, you’d recall that the trio’s forthcoming sophomore effort ALICE is reportedly a “heavy pop” concept album primarily focusing on war, sex, politics and religion — and has the band expanding upon their sound; in fact, the album’s first single “Creature Feature” was a shuffling,  Bowie and Bolan-leaning take on psych rock.

However, ALICE’s latest single “Haunted History,” is a furious and buzzing take on psych rock, possessing  an anthemic and mosh pit-friendly hook paired with propulsive and forceful drumming — and in some way the song sounds as though it draws from grunge rock, thanks in part to some guitar pyrotechnics.

 

 

 

 

 

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

Perhaps best known as the guitarist in Mikal Cronin‘s backing band and the bassist in Fuzz, Chad Ubovich is part of the larger Bay Area/Ty Segall/Thee Oh Sees universe — and over the past couple of years Ubovich has been receiving attention leading his own band Meatbodies, which features Ubovich along with collaborators Patrick Nolan and Kevin Boog, a band which specializes in equally weird, scuzzy, fo-fi rock. Interestingly enough, the trio’s forthcoming sophomore effort ALICE will reportedly be a “heavy-pop” concept album primarily focusing on war, sex, politics and religion and has the trio expanding on their sound a bit, as you’ll hear on the shuffling, Bowie and Bolan meets psych rock new single “Creature Feature.”