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Thursday July 25th, 20247PM DOORS / 8PM SHOW
$20 ADV / $25 DOS
ALL AGES
Remo Drive
Blvck Hippie
The Ellie Badge
To find their muse again, REMO DRIVE went back to where itall began: their parents’ basement. It had been a long time coming for thePaulson brothers – Erik (vocals, guitar) and Stephen (bass) – who formed RemoDrive in Bloomington, Minnesota, in 2013 and have since captivated audiences aroundthe world with an earnest, idiosyncratic brand of indie-rock and two highlylauded albums: 2017’s Greatest Hits and 2019’s Natural, EverydayDegradation.
When the Paulsons stumbled across a Tascam recording desk onFacebook Marketplace in 2019, they thought it might make a nice starting pointto demo songs for their then-forthcoming third LP. But $250 and a few weekslater, they found themselves fully entrenched in making the actual albumitself. Not only that, but the safety and security of their parents’ homeprovided a welcome respite for the brothers, who have learned they’re mostcreative without a ticking clock and prying eyes peeking over their shoulders.
“Our workflow is naturally different from what most producers andstudios like to do,” Erik explains. “We take things in our own weird approachand order. There’s a sense of privacy working at home. It doesn’t feel likeyou’re working with the door open during the incubation process.”
The resulting album, A PORTRAIT OF AN UGLY MAN(due out June 26 on Epitaph) finds the band truly in their element – bothphysically and sonically. Whereas the Paulsons filtered their buoyantsongwriting through the concise lens of storytellers like Bruce Springsteen andThe Killers on Natural, Everyday Degradation, LP3 is more spontaneous,awash in the same sort of acrobatic guitar arrangements and levity that made GreatestHits such an underground favorite.
“I wanted to get back to playing guitar the way I used to, and thenthrow songwriting on top of that,” Erik says. “On the last album, I approachedplaying guitar in a more songwriter-y way. I had really scaled it back so itwouldn’t be as hard for me to sing and play simultaneously, but the guitar isway more forward again now.”
Self-produced and mixed by the duo, A Portrait of an Ugly Manfeels all at once familiar and fresh: The basement breathed a looseness intosongs like “If I've Ever Looked Too Deep In Thought” and “Ode to Joy,” whilethe freedom of the sessions left the band able to explore the next evolution oftheir sound. As such, the 10-song set tips its hat to both the classic rock thebrothers grew up on as well as previously untapped influences: Erik namechecksdesert-rock artists like Queens of the Stone Age while admitting The Good,The Bad and The Ugly soundtrack and his binge-watching of old Westernscontributed to the album’s tremolo-heavy, American frontier gunslingerpastiche.
But this time around, the guiding hands of their musicalinfluences is less overt, a conscious decision the band address on albumstandout “Star Worship,” which preaches the need to eschew reverence for othersand instead trust in yourself. That unflinching sense of self-awareness is whatmade Remo Drive so endearing as they found their footing in the mid-2010s, butit’s never been as crystalized as it is on A Portrait of an Ugly Man. Sowhile the songs still tackle life’s weighter topics, they’re cut with moreself-deprecation and embrace all of life’s absurdity and weirdness in theprocess. They don’t attempt to minimize serious subjects, but rather providesome much-needed irreverence.
“I was bumming myself out by trying to be more serious than Iactually am,” Erik admits. “On this album, I wanted to write stuff that stillcommunicated real ideas but had a bit of lighthearted, fun energy to it.”
In turning the mirror back at themselves in this way, Remo Drivehave learned a lot about who they really are: A Portrait of an UglyMan cements their place as an insular, self-sustaining act who don’t needshiny gear or expensive studios to produce a great album – that task starts andends with the songs themselves. And, as it turns out, the recording process wasproof that when it comes to a nurturing, creative environment, there’s no placelike home.
“We’d been gone so much with touring that our parents were soexcited to have us home,” Erik says. “They’d always come downstairs to hearwhat we were working on. They’re always used to us practicing, but seeing moreof each other was really nice.”
“Plus,” he adds with a laugh, “there’s always some food in thefridge.” **
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
1911 Poplar Ave Memphis TN 38104, 1911 Poplar Ave, Memphis, TN 38104-2654, United States,Memphis, Tennessee
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