Summerdata by Kiss Hello

"Linus Landucci, founder, singer and songwriter for the trio Kiss Hello, now well into its second decade, describes the band’s fourth album Summerdata with an unexpected but striking simile: “Kiss Hello is like a cup. What’s spilled out is a series of diary entries.” The hour-long release, consisting of 19 songs ranging from experimental collages to reflective ruminations, feels indeed like a summer that’s been recalled in retrospect. Summerdata is a vision from the band’s native California that draws on both the recent and distant past to create a memorable sonic synthesis, neither simply pop nor rock nor electronic nor ambient but somewhere all in between, anchored by Landucci’s calmly yearning voice.

Landucci himself describes his vocal approach now that he’s hit his thirties as being more “conversational,” and that’s an apt word given the sense of overheard discussions or personal notes. That conversational feeling can readily be heard throughout Summerdata, always with a gentle, easy sense of melody set amidst a wide range of instrumental and arrangement possibilities, whether on the majestic sweep of “The Inner Voice of Love,” the appropriately calm “A Tranquil Line on the Horizon,” the energetic punch of “Real Thing” or the multipart epic vision of “Western/Whatever,” the album’s longest song.

Landucci and his bandmates Matthew Molaro and Evan Pincus, working with producer Dave LaDelfa, created Summerdata via a Logic digital audio workstation, pushing the possibilities of what often feels like a series of live band performances but was fully constructed within that technical setup. “It was often an uphill battle,” noted Landucci, “but we all like that challenge.” With Molaro and Pincus bringing instrumental ideas to Landucci’s core songs, the sense of sonic freedom that results finds shimmering textures, unexpected samples, rhythmic cascades and much more interwoven with straightforward guitar and percussive touches, all while being immediate and inviting.

Music has been in Landucci’s life since the start; his father, Mike Landucci, founded the famed independent 1990s label Black Bean and Placenta Tape Club, while also starting the ever-transforming underground legends Gang Wizard. Describing his upbringing near California’s famed coastline, Landucci says at one point that “the ocean just often feels like the natural context to write from.” Mixed with a central lyrical theme of loss and memory, such West Coast imagery calls famed sonic pioneers to mind via group harmonies and the rich sound of the album, but there’s no easy aping of the past on Summerdata. “It’s the same dull sunny California day told in different shades of light,” Landucci adds, a sharp inversion of the common vision of the state as carefree paradise.

Kiss Hello are already looking forward to what work follows next for them – Landucci mentions having around a hundred demos to hand and plans to record in yet another way in the future. But Summerdata shows that their path forward is already fulfilling the promise of their earlier years excellently, a capturing of natural glow and technological possibility from the title on down."

-Ned Raggett https://www.patreon.com/cw/nedraggett

kiss hello is like a cup



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