The Key Studio Sessions: Cherry

Russell Edling may have bundled his latest collection of songs under the morose title Gloom, but the music is incredibly bright and vibrant. The first release from his post-Kite Party project Cherry takes a deep dip into the tones of 90s and aughties indie rock, from quirky jangle of Beat Happening and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah to the more enveloping expanses of Teenage Fanclub and Yo La Tengo.

Gloom was released as a 7″ EP on Lame-O Records back in February, and Edling and his band – Eric Osman on drums, Spenser Hogans of Three Man Cannon on bass, Justin Fox of Kite Party and Queen Jesus on guitar, Jesse Kennedy on keys – celebrate it this Sunday, April 3rd with a headlining show at Kung Fu Necktie. To warm up, they swung by XPN Studios to record songs from the record as well as one unreleased jam.

While their sound feels lush and arrangement-heavy in headphones, it’s actually shaped by taut minimalism – something that Edling, in an interview earlier this year, attributed to working on tape with a finite amount of recording space. He had to be very decisive in deciding what to play and how to record it, and likewise, the live band is very smartly assembled for maximum impact. You can hear it in the frenzied breakdown at the end of “Alligators,” or the thundering toms on the bridge of “Golden Luv,” which sings poetically about drive and passion.

Speaking of poetics (and big sounds), make sure you dig in to the unreleased “Cherry,” the band’s theme song of sorts – its crunching guitar tones float through the clouds as Edling describes a dreamlike idyll on a winter day, where flushed cheeks and drops of blood in the snow recall cherries. It fixates on romance as much as mortality, and hey, maybe that’s where the title of the EP plays in.

Stream the band’s performance below, grab a download at Soundcloud and see them perform live this Sunday night, April 3rd, at Kung Fu Necktie. Tickets and more information can be found at the XPN Concert Calendar.