Chanel Beads are what you might call a scene band, the project of producer Shane Lavers, associated with the much-maligned lower Manhattan micro-neighborhood of Dimes Square. They play packed shows in lofts and bars full of kids born in 2004 taking pictures on a point-and-shoot digital camera wearing absolutely huge pants. If you go to a bar called The River and hang out with people downtown, someone will ask you: Hey, have you heard the new Chanel Beads single?
That's essentially how I was introduced to Chanel Beads: because they suddenly became unavoidable, at least in the much-maligned lower Manhattan micro-neighborhood of Dimes Square. It started with “Ef”, a single from last year that somehow sounded like Microphones but also like Enya and Gang Gang Dance? I quickly abandoned any preconceived notions I had about a band that I began to believe was a sort of Drain Gang for the art school set. “Ef” felt completely fresh, a sexy bricolage of completely zonked synths where singer-songwriter Maya McGrory's vocals burst and bloom in a dreamy, somewhat narcotic way.
The band's debut album, Your day will come expands on these dreams and drugs and enjoys more unusual juxtapositions. It's as much Lil Peep as it is Massive Attack. Prefab Sprout and Yung Lean? a record made by people who really freak out about music, who know every twist and turn in Steely Dan's Come on and they are crazy enough to say, but what if we rapped about it? It's a risky proposition, hard to avoid seeming to steal the eye, but more often than not the results are extremely wonderful. On “Unifying Thought”, Lavers sounds like he's singing through a waterfall inside a shopping mall. “I ain't molly no more,” he sings at the start of the song, before it turns sublime, with crescendoing strings falling into a wash of guitars. And he continues: “If you love me, I love you more.”
His general approach Your Day will come it's about finding that challenging sweet spot between being chintzy and being honest. Let's fool around, but with discipline. In practice, this usually means doing something like cutting open-chord elevator music on an acoustic guitar. It means adding some Seinfeld hit bass on the plush downtempo track “Embarrassed Dog” and have it somehow completely intuitive. Or on “Police Scanner”, where loops and shoegaze guitars are startled by Lavers' vocals, the repetition of small “yeahs”, which are performed with the same tracking energy Ren & Stimpy reruns in your parents' basement—paranoia pop, you might say.
For all its lopsided melodies and swinging production, Your Day will come it evokes a strange kind of beauty. It's joined by the more extreme setting, “Coffee Culture,” a gentle drone of strings, synth choruses, drums and some kind of digitally processed brass. It's a welcome break, a comfortable silence. This is the kind of New York entertainment the band puts out, born not of resentment but of honesty. More than anything else, Your Day will come it's nice because it's good. Like sitting shotgun in the car of someone you love and taking turns being the DJ. Like: you're riding your bike and you're a little drunk and it's 90 degrees so you're wearing rash guard because baby, you burn easily. He seems to be saying: giving a shit, caring about your craft, maybe even being a little funny about it, is that okay?
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