PREMIERE: Two Meters - Captive Audience

Will Shenton

"Captive Audience," the second single from Florida artist Two Meters' forthcoming self-titled EP, is a song that resolves itself out of a hazy mist. Lost in an ambient wash, an acoustic guitar strums lazily along, distant and defeated. In a nod to its own construction, Tyler Costolo's vocals enter with understated anguish, "Waking up in a daze / With my head throbbing / Eyes covered and blind / I feel my hands are bound," setting the stage for the increasingly grisly tableau to come.

The track is Costolo's take on the end of a relationship, as unsaid words and regrets linger long after the romance has died, manifesting here as a brutal kidnapping: "I was your hostage / But I had no idea," he sings alongside labelmate and producer Pastel (aka Gabriel Brenner). It's both lyrically and instrumentally raw, blending scenes of physical violence (or, more accurately, their aftermath) with a sound that is simultaneously pleading and exhausted.

Two Meters pulls no punches here. "Captive Audience" is a beautiful song, and one that leaves a lasting impression, but it never shies from its own wounds.

Two Meters' debut EP is out June 15 on Very Jazzed. Pre-order it here.

PREMIERE: Millionyoung - What To Do

Will Shenton

Millionyoung's latest single, "What To Do," is a track that makes itself at home in nearly any context. Opening with a wash of transportive, tropical synths, the song progresses like a dream through Mike Diaz's hazy vocals and shimmering beats, channeling warm sunsets and neon-lit city streets. Punchy enough to stand as a dance track but eminently laid-back, "What To Do" is poised to be an anthem for the summer.

Be sure to catch Millionyoung's new LP, Rare Form, out 4/13 on Mishu Records.

REVIEW: Kitty - Miami Garden Club

Phillipe Roberts

“I think it’s so ironic that you’re taking your holiday exactly where I wish I could escape from.”

Yikes. These words from Kitty’s “509 Seabreeze” should sting for a native Floridian like myself, and they absolutely would if they weren’t so blindingly accurate. Growing up in the margins of the nation’s tourist trap is a peculiar privilege; pinned between two luxurious, sandy coastlines and punctured by a monstrous fairytale complex where a laughably low minimum wage keeps the dream alive for seemingly everyone but its residents, the Sunshine State naturally breeds escapist fantasy.

And it’s exactly here that we catch up with internet pop prodigy Kitty. After losing the entire first draft of her album to the unfeeling void that is LAX baggage claim, she began a hometown recovery effort that would become Miami Garden Club. True to its name, the debut album documents an artist clawing out of the weeds, with Kitty pruning and primping her sound into a sprawling collection that bursts with color. Over the course of its thirteen tracks, she sharpens her trademark electronic bounce to a point that threads the needle between ballads and bangers—it slices through to the core of boredom-fueled love and lust without skipping a beat, and picks up new tricks along the way.

After years of winding her hypnotic, breathy vocals around other producers' tracks, it’s refreshing to see Kitty producing her own this time around. Even better, the first time seems to be the charm: some of Miami Garden Club’s finest moments feature Kitty dancing to the beat of her own drums. “Affectionate,” a sly warning to a former lover, fuses the album’s strongest vocal hook to a tambourine groove that bucks her usual vaporous tendencies in favor of a neon-drenched, mid-tempo thump. It’s the album’s most infectiously danceable moment. And while “Sugarwater,” later in the album, might initially feel like a retread of old ideas—its clicking hi-hats and woozy synths are vintage Kitty—having complete control over the production seems to inspire some of her best lyrics. “The name of the band is Talking Heads / But you always add a 'the' to the beginning” is one hell of a cred-obliterating dig, especially to someone who can’t walk a hundred feet without “stumbling over flyers for your show on the street.”

In this light, it makes sense that the album only truly stumbles on tracks where Kitty relies more heavily on collaboration. “Mass Text Booty Call,” despite its hilarious premise and a bit of fun braggadocio in its opening radio skit, falls short in the absence of a convincing hook. But thankfully, Kitty hits far more often than she misses when she commits to her ridiculous, spontaneous energy. When “Asari Love Song,” an '80s power ballad for her “intergalactic love,” erupts into a soaring guitar solo, it’s undeniably convincing. With heart-stopping synth stabs and crackling reverb snares coiling around her sweetly menacing vocals, Kitty conquers this new, funky territory with frightening ease.

Moving back home—even when that home isn’t brimming with mosquitoes and dogged by hurricanes—is never an easy proposition. Endless questions, real or imagined, about whether you’ve failed or how long you’ll be back seem to lurk around every familiar corner. To an artist like Kitty, who pioneered the model for using a crafty internet persona to flee from small-town obscurity, the move had the potential to be downright paralyzing. Miami Garden Club, with its leaps in songwriting and production that reaffirm how far she’s come from those limiting surroundings, is not the sound of paralysis. It’s the sound of a master escape artist putting her well-laid plans into action.

PREMIERE: Edmondson - Turnings

Laura Kerry

The band Edmondson is actually two Edmondsons—brothers Jack and Robert who come from Hollywood, Florida and now split their time as musicians between Gainesville and Sacramento, California. On their new single, “Turnings,” their familial ease and sentiment is evident. Picking up the theme that emerges in the title of their forthcoming album, Strange Durations, due out in May, and their first single, “Meanwhile,” the brothers lead us through a reflective meditation on time. “The last time we drove here was when we were kids,” they sing in a smooth, slow melody whose lines bleed over into the next. It’s a nostalgic observation only siblings can share, a dimension that makes a simple line rich. Coming full circle, they repeat “Everything is turning” at the beginning and end of the song—a comment, it seems, about the immovable forward motion of time.

In their short existence, Edmondson have already proven themselves a band that considers every layer of their music, and in “Turnings,” they continue that streak by perfectly marrying form and content. The song begins with a piano line that ascends and descends with light urgency. As drums, bass, and a meandering guitar enter, the piano continues its consistent movement up and down, until the song enacts its title by turning at the halfway point in an instrumental swell. Then, after a second refrain, the song turns again, this time into a two-minute segment of smoky jazz piano.

“Turnings” also performs another change of course, from the nostalgic psychedelic–rock leanings of their other single, “Meanwhile,” to a more progressive-rock feel, but each song is also entirely original and eludes any conclusive attempt at classification. Signaling another promise of what’s to come on Edmonson’s debut, “Turnings” provides plenty of food for thought to sustain us with until May.

REVIEW: Sur Back - Kitsch

Laura Kerry

Occam’s Razor is a scientific principle that warns against unnecessary complications. If you have multiple competing theories, opt for the one with the fewest assumptions. Simplicity is best.

Sur Back’s song of the same title is the simplest on her debut EP, Kitsch. Opening with sputtering, reverb-heavy percussion and quiet synth, it begins the album in a sparse, reflective tone. When the vocals enter, though, they present a different picture. Resembling St. Vincent, the voice twists and turns, refusing to conform to expectations. Though the song floats along languidly, Sur Back’s voice doesn’t rest, and following her lead, the instrumentals start to build along with it, multiplying in volume and complexity. The expansive conclusion shatters all notions of simplicity.

Like the opening song, nothing seems truly simple for Caroline Sans, the woman behind Sur Back, who is a literature major hailing from Jupiter, Florida. In an interview from a couple years ago, she revealed that she spent a year researching her moniker and almost as long thinking about the titles of some of her songs, proving that the best things take time and effort. Sans composes synth pop whose bright, dreamy electronics and danceable beat loops are easily digestible, but that also draws from the measured eccentricities of art and baroque pop. The artist says she “[fell] out of hate with pop,” and it comes as no surprise that she had to work her way towards the easy payoffs of the genre in which she has ended up.

At its surface, most of Kitsch sparkles with accessible satisfaction, but it also hints at the richer rewards buried in deeper layers. Despite the lucidity of Sans’ voice in the four-song EP, the lyrics are often soft and hazy, but still hint at the stories that comprise the heart of it. When the words resolve into focus, they do so with captivating force: “My mind is like a sovereign staircase / That the help and the crown are made to share,” she sings in “Pastel,” and as the deep, parched percussion drops out in “Trophy Daughter,” she utters, strikingly, “I don’t want your consolation prize.” Trying to decipher all of the narratives feels like trying to make sense of each blurry star in the night sky; when one achieves clarity, it only sheds light on the untouchable vastness of the rest.

Through the languorous swell of “Occam’s Razor,” the grinding, fuzzed-out guitars of “Trophy Daughter,” the deep pulsing dance beat and aching escalation of strings in “Pastel,” and the elusive stops and starts of “Kitsch,” the artist shows that simplicity is not always best. Though just four songs, Sur Back’s sumptuous and intelligent debut favors multiplication—of instruments, time signatures, voices, and finally, the many delights to take away from it and the number of listens it takes to find them all.