The dream poppers in Radiation City dole out the ear candy
“We’re always trying to move the music in unexpected directions,” says Lizzy Ellison, lead singer, songwriter, keyboard player and founding member of dream-pop outfit Radiation City. “When we’re writing and recording our songs, we look at all the possibilities—time changes, layering of instruments, overdubs, studio effects—then we sort through them to bring out the most cohesive elements. We take those moments, we call them ‘ear candy,’ and showcase them.”
Synesthetica, the band’s fourth album, continues to draw on an expansive rage of influences. The group takes elements of rock from the ’50s and ’60s, bossa nova, jazz, organ music suitable for a smoky late-night cocktail lounge and electronica, and scrambles them up into a sonic sou é that’s uniquely its own.
“We’re not trying to sound retro,” says Ellison, “but that music had a feeling, a spaciousness and a dynamic range that’s been missing for a while.”
As promised, the arrangements on Synesthetica cover a lot of musical and emotional ground. “Separate” blends tango, bossa nova and clanging rock guitar; “Butter” is a breakup song, matching orchestral waves of synthesizer with Ellison’s desolate vocal, while “Fancy Cherries” delivers a simple R&B tune riding a wave of chiming guitars. The music is spacious, but not spacey.
“This album took two years to write and record,” says Ellison. “It’s the first time we worked with an outside producer, so it stretched our creativity. We cut the basic tracks live with John Vanderslice at Tiny Telephone in San Francisco. Then we brought in Jeremy Sherrer (Modest Mouse). He meshed those tracks with our original demos, which took time. Some tempos weren’t the same, so he had to time stretch them and add the effects we wanted. It was exhausting, but we came away with a record that sounds exactly the way we envisioned it.”
—j poet
