Emerging about year ago from the collaborative work of Claudia Meza, Zac Pennington and Joe Kelly, former members of very different Portland bands (follow the links!), Stay Calm drew from a variety of backgrounds a rich catchy cocktail of influences, resulting in a sound that is fairly hard to label.
Now featuring two new members alongside Meza, joined by Pennington and Seattle composer Jherek Bischoff on the synth (who also took charge of the mixing and recording tasks), the trio released on July 9th a new set of two 80s-infused tracks, ‘Fall In Love/Break Up‘, that effectively define the new width of their musical spectrum, but just as important, its coherence. Squeezing into those songs multiple layers and hooks, they juxtapose here a bit of ambient with distinct orchestral harmonies, there a roll of krautrock beats, in the back some dense waves of psychedelia, topped off by a voice insistantly reverberated and a certain punk nonchalance. And that’s only a start. Check them out at Holocene on August 2nd. –Tracy Mamoun