Massage (Ex. Pains of Being Pure at Heart) resurrects the late-’80s on new LP ‘Still Life’. It will be out via Mt.St.Mtn. and co-released with Bobo Integral (Spain) and Tear Jerk Records (Australia). You can listen to Half A Feeling which is lifted from the LP via SoundCloud below.
More about ‘Still Life’
On their sophomore effort, ‘Still Life,’ Los Angeles’ Massage manage to take a quantum leap forward in songwriting, production, and depth, all somehow without seeming to try. These 12 deft songs are full of late-summer sunlight and deep shadows, pained grins and shared jokes, shy declarations of love and quietly nursed heartbreak. ‘Still Life’ resurrects a brief, romantic moment in the late-’80s, right after post-punk and immediately before alt-rock, when it seemed like any scrappy indie band might stumble across a hit. The kind of music Massage makes—sunny, bittersweet, tender—is less a proper genre than a minor zip code nested within guitar pop. Take a little There She Goes by the La’s, some If You Need Someone by the Field Mice; the honey-drizzled guitars from The Cure’s Friday I’m In Love, a Jesus & Mary Chain backbeat, and you’re almost all the way there. Indie pop, jangle pop, power pop—whatever you call it, pushing too hard scares the spirit right out of this sweet, diffident music, and Massage have a touch so light the songs seem to form spontaneously, like wry smiles.
“One of the unsung gems of 2018 was ‘Oh Boy,’ the debut from Los Angeles’ Massage. The band blended indie pop touchstones into a bittersweet quilt that scooped up nods to The Go-Betweens, Sarah Records and Flying Nun. They poured over Feelies’ riffs and Tweprs b-sides to land on a sound that was a timeless nod to jangle-pop’s perseverance. With a new album on the horizon they add a bit of a warm fuzz blanket to the mix, peppering in shades of Jesus and Mary Chain to their sound on Half a Feeling. A new LP, ‘Still Life,’ is on the way from powerhouse EU indie Bobo Integral early this summer and it sits nicely alongside the label’s recent issues from The Boys With the Perpetual Nervousness and Ezrat, channeling the indie earnestness of the Creation 12” bin to a new era. Recorded with Lewis Pesacov (Fool’s Gold, Foreign Born, Peel’d) at his intimate backyard studio in Echo Park and mixed by Jed Smith (My Teenage Stride, Jeanines) the sophomore LP continues to evolve Massage’s sound, yet retains a certain effortlessness that made their debut such a delight.” – Raven Sings The Blues
‘Still Life’ will be out on June 25th, 2021 on coke-bottle green vinyl.
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