#chloe roth

[konstargirl]

Chloe roth

Go follow this girk on fb. She is an advocate of alot of things,

[jabez-dawes]

For years I asked my dad, “When will I be able to do things and go places?” “The moment when the pain of not doing something becomes greater than the pain of doing it,” he always answered.

A Closet Agoraphobe Comes Out(side) by Chloe Roth for The Bold Italic

This article was so illuminating for me, in explaining myself to myself.

[fygardensandvilla]

Gardens & Villa lives 'hippie idealism'

By Chloe Roth

Photo by Cara Robbins

For many, the whole point of joining a band is to attain the quintessential rock 'n' roll lifestyle. For the members of Santa Barbara psychedelic synth-pop quintet Gardens & Villa, it was quite the opposite.

"Our lifestyle was getting out of control, and we weren't really taking ourselves seriously," says front man Chris Lynch, who met his fellow bandmates in college. "We were partying hard, had long hair and didn't really give a s-. When we got back together, it was a conscious decision to take our lives more seriously and be more attentive to the world."

Lynch, 27; keyboardist Adam Rasmussen, 29; and drummer Levi Hayden, 28, had been in a post-punk band for four years when things "crumbled" in 2007. Lynch embarked on a six-month hitchhiking trip up the coast to Vancouver, British Columbia. During his stay in Portland, Ore., where he met a group of urban gardeners, things began to shift.

Lynch returned to Santa Barbara; moved into a house on Villa Avenue with Rasmussen, Hayden and bassist Shane McKillop, 25; and set to work - on new music and a new lifestyle. "We tore out our backyard and planted a garden according to the techniques I saw up north," Lynch recalls. "And instead of noise collages, we decided to write songs with traditional hooks and melodies."

Those hooks caught the ear of singer/songwriter/producer/"musical guru" Richard Swift, now a member of the Shins.

"We never met Swift," McKillop recalls. "We talked to him on the phone for two minutes. He was this strange, enigmatic character, and we just drove up there on a whim."

They headed to Cottage Grove, a "sleepy" town two hours south of Portland. Pitching tents in Swift's backyard, they bathed in a stream and ate nuts and avocados during the two-week recording session.

The kitchen-less, shower-less "hippie idealism," as Lynch calls it, stood in contrast to the electronic sound Swift encouraged the band to move toward, but it fit with Swift's nostalgia for live-to-tape recording techniques and vintage equipment. The result, their self-titled debut released by Secretly Canadian, is a refreshing marriage of the poppy '80s and ethereal '60s, a Talking Heads/Beatles mashup with a modern twist, a touch of the Pacific Northwest and a whole lot of California.

"I don't know exactly what the 'California sound' is, but a lot of people have told us we have it," Lynch says.

Maybe it's the band's love of the outdoors, yearning to live off the grid or embrace of the eclectic, as with Lynch's obsession with the bansuri, an Indian flute found throughout the album. Or maybe it is a melancholy coming from Lynch's feeling that "the real California has been lost," perhaps something he gleaned from his avid interest in Santa Barbara's indigenous Chumash Indians.

"A lot of the time we feel alienated from our own city, because it's overrun with strangers," Lynch says of the local tourist influx. "That alienation and retreat to nature is where a lot of our music comes from."

Two years ago, Lynch was working at a vegan restaurant, McKillop at a hotel front desk, Rasmussen was managing a hardware store, Hayden was waiting tables, and Dusty Ineman, 25 - the percussionist added to bring the record's sound to live performances - was working at an abalone hatchery. "We've gone through a lot of breakups, moving out of our homes, joblessness and giving up everything for the dream," Lynch says.

But 150 shows later, people are starting to pay attention.

"This is the first summer we all can pay rent with our music," McKillop adds. "That's a huge accomplishment we never thought would be possible."

Chloe Roth is a freelance writer. E-mail: [email protected] Twitter: @thechloeroth

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/music/article/Gardens-Villa-lives-hippie-idealism-3717928.php#ixzz23GT4PceP