photo credit: Bliss Braoudakis
“A hazy, startlingly clear outpouring of beautiful and stunning sound, Photo Ops’ album Pure At Heart evokes picturesque scenes as its author spills himself out through an adventure of the body and soul alike.” – Atwood Magazine
“A simple and beautiful ode to healing, foregoing metaphors for straight-forward confessions.” – Consequence Of Sound
“Pure At Heart asserts his [Terry Price’s] prowess for perfecting a very distinctive blend of 4AD dreampop and folky wisdom” – American Songwriter
This Friday
Photo Ops, the project of Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter Terry Price, will release his new album
Pure at Heart via Western Vinyl
(pre-order). In anticipation of Friday’s release,
Pure At Heart is streaming in full along with a track by track breakdown of the album at
Atwood Magazine. About the album Price tells Atwood Magazine, “
Pure At Heart has me lyrically with one foot in the confessional and one foot in the impressionistic. Listening to a lot of old folk, gospel, country, combined with the great melodians of Los Angeles (
Brian Wilson, Lindsay Buckingham, Rivers Cuomo, Tom Petty, Jason Martin) I tried to synthesize proof of the natural beauty I saw upon my arrival here, while expressing the loneliness one can feel when you move somewhere new.”
Photo Ops has a livestream performance coming up on Wednesday, September 23 at 8pm EST. The
Nine Mile Touring Showcase is hosted by
Baby’s All Right / Baby TV and will also feature a set from
Rachel Browne of Field Mouse. Tickets start at $5 and can be purchased
HERE. Proceeds from this livestream will be split between the artists playing, the staff at
Baby’s All Right, the community organization
Make The Road NY and
The Audre Lorde Project.
As Photo Ops, Price creates dream pop with a tinge of folk. Pure at Heart was inspired in part by Price’s time listening to and studying Bob Dylan‘s Sirius XM show, “Theme Time Radio Hour” while driving through the Southwest. He explains “I was learning that what made a lot of older music magical, was the performers having to work with limitations. So you had to rely on human performance and the energy you could conjure in real time, in the moment, to communicate your idea.”
Since his 2013 debut, How to Say Goodbye, his compact, richly textured songs have garnered over a million plays on Spotify with their eminently hummable melodies, deeply personal lyrics, and earnest, resonant vocals. His sophomore effort, Vacation, came in 2016 and solidified Photo Ops’ reputation forcombining beautifully melodic production with raw emotionality. In that same year, he signed a publishing deal with Secretly Canadian and saw several of his songs licensedfor film and TV.
After relocating from Nashville (where some referenced him as one of the best pop songwriters in town) to Los Angeles, new songs began to emerge that are among the best of his career. In these new tracks, Price captures the feeling of leaving the old behind and embracing the unknown that’s ahead, and he reflects back an impressionistic take on the space and mystery of traveling through the American West. While he continues to evolve and synthesize his own brand of pop sensibility and hymn-like lullaby, here he introduces a stripped-down, natural aesthetic that relishes limited instrumentation.
Another big change in these songs lies in Price’s voice. There is a clarity to the upper register, as he relaxes into high notes in a way that calls to mind the Beach Boys’ Carl Wilson. It’s partly an accident of location, Price says. “In Nashville, I had a garage. Icould go out and make as much noise as I wanted. In LA, you have to be thoughtful about your neighbors.” The need to sing quietly has opened up a whole new vocal palette for Price, allowing him to experiment with space and restraint.
For the recording of Pure at Heart, Price and a friend turned the living room of his 575 square foot apartment into a studio. “We mostly stuck with the instruments and gear I had on hand and tried to make it sound just as inspired as when we had more of a traditional studio at our disposal.We nailed packing blankets to the walls and ceilings of my living room and created a studio in my apartment. This forced us to rely less on bells and whistles, more on the strength of the musical ideas and performance.”
