photo credit: Mel Suchowolec
Watch “Sunday Runner” video at YouTube
Portland-based indie rock band
Corvair, comprised of husband / wife duo Brian Naubert and Heather Larimer, are pleased to present
“Sunday Runner,” the first single to be lifted from their
self-titled, debut album out February 19, 2021 via
Paper Walls in the US and
WIAIWYA in the UK. The song and accompanying video, which was directed and edited by Naubert, premiered today at
Northern Transmissions.
About the song the band says:
“Sunday Runner” is a song about a high altitude first date that turns into a tortuous affair–and the literal weekly habit of running around a lake to burn off the frustration of it all. The song is a riff-forward descent into synth rock, laden with emotionally pointillistic lyrics and cryptic turns of phrase. The tension builds until the song finally spills over into lush Mamas and Papas-inspired harmonies and a sweetly earnest pledge to do whatever it takes to keep the flame alive. “Sunday Runner” was mostly tracked (other than the drums), like the rest of the album, in our home studio during the COVID quarantine of Spring 2020 when we had nothing to do at night but argue via song lyrics about the finer points of our origin story and sift through 200 different organ sounds to find the right mix of Deep Purple and Yo La Tengo.
The husband / wife duo Brian Naubert and Heather Larimer are both seasoned musicians, having performed in bands such as Eux Autres, Ruston Mire and The Service Providers. Naubert and Larimer’s decades of separate music making have finally combined, culminating in this tour de force from two formidable songwriters. Corvair sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard and everything you’ve always loved.
The duo’s debut album charts a starcrossed love story over three decades, five cities, and six continents. Spanning from atmospheric pop to jangly confessional, 70s AM to 90s FM, this work is laden with stunning lyrics and prodigious melodies, two voices leaping to meet in the ether. The album was largely created during the COVID pandemic shutdown of Spring 2020. It includes work with drummer
Eric Eagle (Jesse Sykes, Wayne Horvitz) and engineer
Martin Feveyear (Brandi Carlile, Mark Lanegan, Mudhoney), who also mixed the record.
Larimer explains, “Being stuck in a house together with very little outside influence made us more emotionally raw, definitely weirder, and also more patient and intricate in developing the songs. And because we were in a bubble, cooking dinners from paranoidly-disinfected groceries and listening to old records, really disparate references from some of our favorite music ended up colliding in odd ways–an emotional Judas Priest bridge, an anthemic Pixies outro, a spacey keyboard sound from Steve Miller, Jeff Lynne’s acoustic guitar tone, a Carpenters-style lush harmony. I think it’s a wonderfully weird record, but also very in-your-face pop because what else are you going to do when the world feels like it’s ending?”
Separately, Naubert and Larimer have created or appeared on more than 20 records. Heather’s musical mainstay was the garage pop band Eux Autres, broadly hailed as a “veritable cult classic” band, radio-debuted by the legendary John Peel, and featured in many shows, movies and commercials. Brian is a longtime fixture of the Northwest rock community, having played in vital bands such as Tube Top, Pop Sickle, and the critically-lauded Ruston Mire since 1993. More recently, Brian released his first solo record, Hoffabus and a record with the Pacific NW Supergroup, The Service Providers.
