Yoodoo Park’s road from the Explore EP to today’s release of the full-length Empire is the evolution of solo dream pop drafts applied and ported to the band platform. The sea dreaming tune of “Coral” comes of age with the skate and surf pop soda of “Teenage Rhythm” while Empire’s closer “Dear Fear” holds on tight to those personal inner reflective trajectories. Escaping to those inward passages common in the world of GRMLN, Laura Hartung’s acoustic video debut of “Dear Fear” takes off with Yoodoo to a cavernous, graffiti covered water pipe for an intimate acoustic session.
Grabbing his guitar with a few impromptu bars from "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", Hartung and Park enter into the well tagged tunnel. From the first few chord strums, the hollow utility becomes alive with the unplugged conflicts of happiness and sorrow. Taking these sentiments to the underground, Yoodoo allows his emotion to be worn on his UCSC shirt sleeve and heard in his hushed delivery. "I fell down quicker than before", singing and occasionally splintering into almost whispered syllables, "these broken pieces in my voice, photographs and broken words”. Given the sewer like environment, lines like, “as time rushes out, pushing me away from you”, are heard like an underground backwash flow that stems from time's tests of the heart.
The water drainage pipe venue provides not only just the right acoustics but a barely lit place for conflicted feelings. "These lonely thoughts are in my head, I could have taken you instead, to the darkness of my mind, I didn't want you to be blind". The feelings of pure joy and ecstasy of romance in the world of GRMLN are always grounded in the acknowledged realities of discontinuities of departures. The wistful dreams and skate park rock energy are kick flipped into observances of life's changes and recognizing the temporal state of existence. Yoodoo embraces the fact that nothing lasts forever with more than a hint of holding on to a certain ineffable longing that lies in the eyes of another. "As time's running out, for my life to start back new, in your eyes…in your eyes".
The GRMLN full-length Empire is available now from Carpark Records.
Catch GRMLN on tour with Tijuana Panthers via the following dates.
June
14 Los Angeles, CA – The Smell
July
16 Portland, OR – Doug Fir with Tijuana Panthers
18 Seattle, WA – Rendezvous with Tijuana Panthers
19 Reno, NV – Chapel with Tijuana Panthers
21 San Francisco, CA – Cafe du Nord with Tijuana Panthers
22 Bakersfield, CA Sandrinis with Tijuana Panthers
23 San Diego, CA – Soda Bar with Tijuana Panthers
24 Long Beach, CA – Fingerprints (In-store)
26 Los Angeles, CA – The Echo with Tijuana Panthers
27 Pomona, CA – The Glasshouse (Viva! Pomona)
