photo courtesy of the artist
Gold Record is comprised of lifelong friends Evan Michalski, Noah Clark, & Ryan McKone. The band formed in quarantine 2020 while spread out between the Bay Area, California and the High Desert, New Mexico. Gold Record came into being to keep a strong creative focus during lockdown and celebrate their love of collaboration and adventurous pop music. Today the band is pleased to present the first single
“Glow Up The Day” from their
EP Volume Five Out October 23 (pre-order). The track premiered today at
Stereo Embers and will be on
all streaming platforms this Friday. On the song Stereo Embers says, “Buoyed by a smooth croon layered over a bed of dreamy synths, ‘Glow The Day’ is nothing short of an instant classic that brings to mind the early work of
Take That and
Crush-era OMD.“
“Glow The Day” is a retro dance fusion anthem about finding the silver lining in challenging situations. “Once quarantine had gone on for a while, there was all this talk about things going back to normal and getting at some non-specific future date.” says Gold Record’s Evan Michalski. “We wanted to write a song that captured the spirit of what we were trying to achieve with this project: how do we make things better and more positive for ourselves right now – even in this weird ass time?” “The line that really captured the spirit of that which became the guiding mantra is ‘let’s find pleasure in the gray’. This was our reminder to ourselves that sometimes you’re in bizarre situations that feel out of control – but you still have the opportunity to make something beautiful out of it.
After quickly writing and self-releasing four EPs, Gold Record’s
Volume Five sees the band finding their stride with a unique blend of percussive vocal harmonies, stacked beats, and an eclectic blend of live + sampled instruments to create an overall sound that is syncopated, fun, earwormy, dancy, and has a sense of humor. Mixed by veteran mixer
Alex Newport (At the Drive-In, Bloc Party, Death Cab For Cutie),
Volume Five takes the Gold Record sound in a bigger, livelier, and more expansive direction.
The EP kicks off with “Everybody Knows Your Name” – a throwback to an early 90’s R-n-B feel that opens the record on a positive note. Michalski says, “We wanted the sound of the song to capture the feeling of excitement watching MTV after school while also sounding like a song that would be played at a graduation.” The lyrics speak to the times in life where you are able to help someone you love achieve their goals. He adds, “There were so many songs about people individually achieving their dreams – but not many songs about helping someone else achieve theirs. We felt for us it’s so much more satisfying when you see the people you love around you succeed, so we wanted to explore that in the song”.
“Rainbow” ends the EP on a happy, chill, and slightly psychedelic note. The song is inspired by the moments of transition in life that create the opening for something honest and beautiful to happen. Michalski says, “Rainbows are something everyone always notices and gets happy about. And it was a recurring theme we explored a lot in this EP – how times of transition can snap us out of our routines and remind us of something genuine within ourselves. On this song – we tied that to moments where you get the spontaneous urge to reach out to someone you haven’t connected with for a long time and when you debate with yourself – “should I reach out now?”. Wherever that resistance is coming from, this song is about seeing the rainbow, seeing the opening, and getting the courage to follow through and reach out.”
The video for “Rainbow” is the debut of a recurring quarantine live collaboration series called “Live from the Goldmine.” Michalski says, “We were really missing the ability to play music in person with our friends and we got really inspired by clever remote collaborations that started to come up like NPR’s Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts. So we created that experience for ourselves with the Goldmine and gave ourselves the freedom to explore these songs with a larger arrangement and some non-standard pop music instruments – like the mandolin.” The result is a dreamy re-imagining of the songs that adds new dimensionality to the trio’s pop music vision.
Gold Record will end 2020 with a Christmas EP and release a song every 2 weeks through 2021.
