Words by Willa Rudolph
On Friday, August 1st, New York based indie rock band Sex Week released a dream-world of a new EP, Upper Mezzanine, via Grand Jury.
The band has said this collection of 5 songs helped them solidify their sound, with the title inspired by a kind of liminal space, a “somewhere in between,” with tracks ranging from soaring to hazy and shadowy, mischievous to tongue-in-cheek and playful, upbeat to gloomy and doomy.
Comprised of Pearl Amanda Dickson and Richard Orofino, a couple in real life who first bonded over shared musical tastes, Sex Week turns each song on Upper Mezzanine into full-throttle explorations of very specific, focused ideas and uncanny emotions. Each track is a different dream-world from the last, but with through lines including layered vocals, unconventional percussive elements, lyrical conversation between the two vocalists, and sounds falling well outside those produced by the typical four-piece rock band.
Since the first single from Upper Mezzanine, “Lone Wolf,” came out alongside a world-building, self-directed music video, I had my eyes and ears open to what was to come from this EP. In the video, as a motorcycle traverses a back road with an inverse photo negative effect, background choral voices echo across negative space and you’re drawn into Sex Week’s universe—solitude converging with partnership, inquisitiveness colliding with experimentation, whimsy coexisting with gravitas and intensity—privy to the journey of a young band fleshing out what their sound is, will be, and what their music will mean.
After about a minute, we cut to a scene of Dickson dancing around in a blue wig, illuminated by the headlights of a car, in the middle of a liminal “nowhere”. We see Orofino backlit, sitting between the two headlights watching her dance. In scenes such as these, the band has a kind of effortless sex appeal, a mysterious but quirky magnetism, a sort of un-pin-pointable attraction that mirrors their music.
Track one of Upper Mezzanine, “Coach,” opens with a few repeated bass notes and some ambient rustling noises in the background, until a finger-picked guitar enters and Dickson’s voice floats on in. Then, in the chorus, suddenly the song bursts open—in a way reminiscent of a mid 2000’s indie pop-rock song, kinda like Passion Pit or GROUPLOVE—“Take me out coach / put a new one in / I promise they’ll run for gold”, they sing in call-and-response dialogue between their voices. Orofino’s production is impeccable and so original, full of small sonic touches and unexpected timbres adding up to a fully immersive, innovative sound.
Also released alongside a music video (directed by Sex Week & Jason Isip) we see Dickson, this time outfitted in a green wig, carried down a desert path by Orofino with his face concealed for most of the video. Having escaped the desert, Dickson again twirls and dances around various empty settings–a recurring theme in Sex Week’s music videos it seems—as if testing the boundaries of whatever space she occupies. In these videos, Sex Week tends to curate a vibe more than tell a specific story. The result is ambiguous and open-ended, much like their music, with generous latitude given to how people may choose to interpret and relate to their music and music videos.
Track #3, “Beethoven,” one of my two favorite from the project, is slower and more gloomy, with a slide-guitar line that’s like a slowed-down echo of an Old Western cowboy song: “I would wait all day / I would wait / I want you here with me / I’ll be here.” The loneliness and the longing are palpable as Dickson yearns, “Beethoven, Beethoven,” her voice haunted. “…Come give me something to do / Beethoven, I’ll get all sloppy for you…” The song meanders along, until around three minutes into its nearly five-minute running time, the production switches up. An unexpected drum track spatters underneath the vocals, alternating between Dickson and Orofino, as bells ding distantly in the background. Finally, the track returns to its original droning instrumentation until it fades out.
The next track, “Coat”, echos and mirrors itself musically, also featuring mirrored images in the music video. Dickson chants over a rhythmic bass line before Orofino’s voice bursts in with a question, “If you go / would you take my coat / Hold it close / like you want it / Just how you like it?” I love how they describe such small specific feelings, moments, and ideas as opposed to trying to convey something in more massive terms. Somehow, they keep things simple while complicating them, focusing on specifics while remaining mysterious and vague.
Finally, the project ends with “Moneyman,” my absolute favorite track from Upper Mezzanine. It’s hopeful, playful, sweet, and charming, and has an epic harmonica part. The IRL couple sing about making music together, working towards being a successful pair and making money together by creating art, and then spending it all (“Don’t hold your money, man, just spend it all / Make it rain, yeah, just make it fall”). It’s so sweet as they sing back and forth to each other. No less charming is the music video which follows the pair as they play around in Las Vegas together, capturing youth, longing, and optimism in sound and imagery.
Taken together, Upper Mezzanine is like an expedition with many twists and turns, a 21-minute EP that elevates Sex Week to being one of the most exciting musical projects coming out of NYC currently (Orofino has produced many other recent NYC-based projects too, including Comet’s latest EP Quitter that we wrote up a couple months ago), so you’ll definitely wanna stay up on Sex Week here! And as for our Limey readers, soon upcoming tour dates can be found below:
