Brooklyn-based art-punk five-piece Foyer Red have been teasing their debut LP, Yarn the Hours Away, for a while now and I’ve rather enjoyed those singles. Their music has a lot in common with turn-of-the-10s blog bands like Deerhoof, Friends, and Los Campesinos!. All interlocking atonal melodies hovering on the shared borders separating pop, indie, and lo-fi. But this new single, “Gorgeous,” I really enjoy. Compared to the other tasters shared from Yarn, which charge forward with disaffected NY cool, it’s a more midtempo and sincere affair. Though it starts with a jammy discordance, particularly in the palmed up-strum guitar chords of the left channel, “Gorgeous” soon settles into a lilting groove that rides a Eric Jaso bouncy bassline, vocalist Elana Riordan’s sweet voice, and a combination guitar/clarinet solo which is so much prettier than that may sound on paper. If I were still in university, I could definitely envision myself wasting an afternoon or two just sat contentedly on the grass as that outro drifts along.
Riordan shared a statement on the track’s creation:
“We wrote this song organically in the studio together one day. It was one of those songwriting experiences that blows your mind over and over and makes you feel incredibly lucky to have such well-matched collaborators. I recorded a voice memo of us playing (later renamed it “wow gorgeous jam”) and listened to this low quality voice memo on repeat for days, literally bubbling up in bliss. I wrote the lyrics about my partner and bandmate Marco [Ocampo], for whom I keep a list of ‘Marco-isms’, his ever endearing botched colloquialisms that I hope he will never correct.”
You too can fall for “Gorgeous” by streaming below.
Yarn the Hours Away releases on 19th May via Carpark Records.
Words: Callie Petch
