New York-based garage punks Miranda and the Beat — currently founding duo Miranda Zipse (vocals, guitar) and Kim Sollecito (drums) with Dylan Fernandez (Farfisa) and Alvin Jackson (bass) — can trace their origins back to a small California town, where the band’s founding duo met. Zipse, a high school dropout, had been working for her mom’s estate sale business going through dead people’s belongings and making up melodies in her head as she went about it to pass the time. Some of those melodies became the band’s first songs.
After playing shows locally, the duo decided to visit NYC, and during that visit, they tried their chops playing shows around town. When they’re friends, The Mystery Lights went on tour, the pair shacked up in their friends’ apartment and simply decided to never leave. The pair gave up their possession and a humdrum, everyday sort of existence in the hopes of making it as a real band.
Zipse and Sollecito shared a bed, looked for work and spent their time honing their craft. They met Dylan Fernandez when he delivered weed to a guy Zipse was dating at the duo’s apartment. Fernandez then joined the band. A years later, after Kate Gutwald’s departure, the band added Fernandez’s little brother Alvin Jackson. The band then continued to play around town, and eventually wrote what would become their highly-anticipated full-length debut. Building upon a growing profile, the New York-based garage punks opened for The King Khan and BBQ Show‘s seven-week long US and Canadian tour, also further cementing their reputation as a must-see live act.
The legendary King Khan, the self-professed “Emperor of R&B” says of the band “I never thought I would see someone be able to play guitar with the ferocity of Link Wray, and sing like Lydia Lunch had a nuclear meltdown and morphed into Etta James and Yma Sumac. Miranda and the Beat ARE the quintessential heirs to our rock n’ roll throne… May the circle remain unbroken. Consider the torch has not only been passed but its fiery tale is ready to set the whole world on fire all over again.”
Miranda and the Beat’s highly-anticipated, self-titled, full-length debut is slated for a May 26, 2023 release through Ernest Jennings Record Co./King Khang’s Khannibalism. The Nick Zinner-produced and-mixed album is reportedly a hallucinogenic ode to the canon of soul, garage punk, pure R&B and mayhem.
The album’s latest single “Concrete” is an old-fashioned sweaty, grimy and downright feral ripper built around fuzzy power chord-driven riffage, a forcefully propulsive rhythmic chug paired with Zipse’s powerhouse vocal range. Swaggering, gritty, nasty garage punk full of booze, piss and spittle ain’t dead y’all — and Ms. Zipse and company are here to get in your face and remind you of it. Play this one as loud as you can fucking stand it!
The accompanying video employs slickly edited footage from Velveeeta cheesy B horror movies, including a Roger Corman-like intro about a haunted house, some childlike drawings of ghosts and other creepy crawlies, eyeballs, a beating heart and more.
