Local Phonies have released their new album ‘Static Prismatic’ via Blank Brothers Recordings. You could say that the lead single ‘Rat-Level’ is the perfect introduction to the album ‘Static Prismatic’. It has that ‘mid way’ sound about it. Not too hard and not too soft. Kind of like getting that cookie that’s been out of the oven for just the right amount of time. But wait, there’s more. There is a consistent yet varied substance. Being a Gen X’r, I get that same feeling I had in 1992 when music was changing from the lifeless late 80’s hair band drivel to something gritty, subtle, and new. ‘Static Prismatic’ lays down all of those feelings and more.
As ‘The Cowardice of Young Love’ chugs along from that initial listen. By the time you get to ‘Don’t Think About It’, you’re spent. Partly tired. Partly flushed. Entirely consumed. This is the beauty of a good album. It allows you to grow with the music, when the music is good. You can get lost and found all in the span of 45 minutes. You leave with the realization that their name is a misnomer. They are neither local nor phonies. They are her. And they are real.
About ‘Static Prismatic’
Local Phonies is an eclectic musical duo from Seattle and Boston, comprised of Jon Fricchione and Conor Garrison. The two artists handle every aspect of their creative process, from production to cover art design. Their new album, Static Prismatic, continues to showcase their DIY ethos and genre-blending sound. Their sonic expression is indie-rock centric but also wanders to the sounds of electronica and psychedelic…
Their latest single, “Rat Level” explores disillusionment and the other heavyweights that which come with living in the modern world. A white picket fence is not a daydream, but rather, a nightmare. Being at “Rat Level”- so low to the ground that you can’t even fall…Collecting unpleasant memories and feelings, like dust piling up on a rodent’s fur…But then the sun comes out, and creativity blossoms…And everything is a little bit better again.
The song opens, and waves of guitars envelop us with their nostalgic timbre and are backed up by a drum kit.
The lead singer’s voice is plainspoken honest, and bright-timbred. This song could easily be featured in a movie, as the lead is walking down the street at dusk, disassociating…
Something about “Rat Level” is raw and gritty, so relatable that it’s something that you could almost reach out and touch. Then we get a taste of the lyric which will is to repeated “I get the Sunday scaries every day of the week”. As we listen, we find ourselves sinking into this gnawing feeling of unease.
“Rat Level” is a song that manages to be dark and cynical, yet also, comical. Another facet of the song is its melancholic acceptance. It’s just how life is, “C’est La Vie!” and Local Phonies are expressing their “ennuyeux”.
Next the music shifts to having a bitter-sweet, and slightly hopeful chord progression as the singer echos: “We have a lot to remember, we have a lot to remember”.
This lightness continues until the end of the song. Finally, the tune closes with its last coy jab at pop culture, adulthood, and the world of advertising.
Q&A
What inspired your guy’s title “Rat Level?” Does it reflect a specific personal experience, or is it more of a general concept or feeling you’re cultivating?
I was living in NYC when I wrote it and as everyone knows, rats are a part of day to day life. They’re looked at as the lowest but really they’re extremely tough and successful creatures that exist within the foundations of a massive city. We know they’re everywhere, but in a city of millions they still seem to maintain an air of mystery. We typically see them out of the corner of our eye. Maybe the longest look we get at them is when they’re milling about under the tracks at the subway platform.
So we use it in the sense of the “lowest” actually having strength and ubiquity that maybe isn’t fully realized.
What is “The Voice” which speaks in your song”?
When we were writing the track, I felt really amused by imagining what I could get people to sing along to. So I want the audience to be the voice. The idea of a group of people singing “I get the sunday scaries every day of the week” feels funny in an “uh oh” kind of way. A sighing, “what are we doing?” feels most cathartic at this moment.
Local Phonies reminds me of a Clockwork Orange. I have to ask, how did you come up with your band name?
Though it’s unintentional, we love the connection. We like how cheeky and self-effacing it is. “Local” puts us close to the listener and “Phonies” discredits us immediately…which we think is best. A tiny step on the road to ego-death! We are two silly men who have been unable to stop making music together for 20 years, hopefully it positions listeners to let the art speak for itself. After this long, that’s all we want.
Let’s talk about the moment the song peaks: When you mention loving the bomb. What does this metaphor mean?
We had a lot of trouble coming up with a line to fit that spot in the song. I ended up reaching back to Dr. Strangelove (or How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb)–one of my favorite movies. We’re both well into our thirties and looking around to see so many deals with so many devils. How easy is it to permit those deals just so you aren’t hassled? We’re all so exhausted by the constant game and grift that it feels easier to go along to get along. “Love the bomb so the bomb loves you back.”
Every song on this album deals with the idea of giving up in some way and it’s meant to feel gross. Our intention is for the listener to react against it, to be unsettled by turning off. Don’t love the bomb, love each other and fight the bomb.
What was the mastering and production process like? I heard you did it all yourself, from start to finish.
I’ve been obsessed with the art of recording since the beginning. When we were kids in Conor’s basement, we were “mixing” by finding the spot in the room where my dad’s old windows 98 laptop could pick up vocals, guitar and drums in the right balance. Since then, we’ve picked up progressively more skills to where we feel like we can achieve the kind of sound we want on our own. From a process standpoint it’s pretty standard, I think, aside from having a pretty mobile studio setup.
For prior projects we may have completed our parts remotely, dubbing tracks and emailing them back and forth. I think we both came to miss the old days of being a duo in Conor’s basement. This time around we made a point to wait until Conor and I could be in a room together to actually progress songs from the demo stage. We’d throw the lyrics up on a big screen and go through them line by line together. Each song was recorded to a drum-machine track with Conor and I recording the melodic backbone together, live, on some combination of guitar-guitar, guitar-bass. We’d track to the dummy drums until we were able to lock down time in a room with a drum kit. Conor then had a very, VERY long weekend where we wrote and recorded drum parts to replace our dummy drum tracks. The only one where we didn’t was Had It Up to Here, which had a PJ Harvey and Flood kind of sound that I wouldn’t part with.
After we finished recording, I pretty much obsessively mixed and remixed, getting feedback from Conor as we iterated. Then mastering, ugh, mastering. That’s about when one starts to lose their mind. I learn something new every time I do it. Next time, I’ll probably do a better job unless someone will pay for it to be done for us! ;P
How does Static Prismatic differ from Home, Not Home, and Canyonero?
For Static Prismatic, we felt more driven to bring the songs to a deeper place than when they were initially written. Musically, some songs were leftover half-ideas from years prior while others came to form when we finally were able to find studio time together and flesh songs out. I think these are nostalgic for when we were carving songs out in a room together – something that a lot of more modern bedroom-based production doesn’t always capture.
By comparison, Home, Not Home was more of a cathartic outpouring of songwriting during lockdown. A lot of it was written during a lot of big transitions in our lives- Jon was starting out as a doctor in NYC right as COVID began to peak, Conor had a cross-country move followed by a breakup. We sent our songs back and forth via email to produce the whole project and released it in the form of 4 EPs that could be listened to like a double album when stacked.
Prior to that, we wrote and recorded most of Canyonero in California and that alone influenced a good amount of the lyrics and music. I think for that one, our first as “Local Phonies,” we pushed ourselves to write with less self-consciousness, a bit more of our sense of humor, and speak to the absurd modern realities of entertainment/social media. It was when platforms/streaming and the term “content” began replacing albums, movies and TV in our entertainment diet. I mean the name alone is a Simpsons reference! All that being said, these albums reflect the times when our environments spurred our curiosity to make art.
Can you give us a little sneak peak of the themes and colors of sound that will be inside Static Prismatic?
We tried to tie together many musical styles on Static Prismatic and challenged ourselves to make it feel like a cohesive journey from start to finish. You’ll hear some light psychedelia, but you’ll also hear some chamber folk, good old fashioned indie rock, krautrock rhythms, a song with a disney melody but a distorted and sour backing track, you know, stuff no one really asked for… haha.
Thematically, the album imagines giving up. Every song has a little permutation of that sickening, itchy little feeling that it would be nice to just give in and go numb. It’s a very serious and sad theme, but hopefully a little humor comes across here and there (I mean, we do imagine the four horsemen of the apocalypse arriving through a flaming hole in a Denny’s parking lot).
If people can come away with a little resistance to the idea of giving up, then that would be an accomplishment. When we were making the art and carving the linoleum prints, we came up with a character we ended up calling “The Phony”– a hooded cultish figure with a gas mask, a VR headset and a brand-non-specific tablet. I like to think that’s the visual metaphor for this temptation to turn off or anesthetize ourselves. Then we put ourselves in robes on the cover, followers of a fool, content in his own world, in the safety of his own reality. Once a phony always a phony.