Independent
Joe Vann / From Indian Lakes
Joe Vann’s new record is a literal and spiritual homecoming. The singer-songwriter’s debut solo LP, TK, is an intimate rummage through his past: it weds the freewheeling experimental aesthetics of his beloved indie band, From Indian Lakes, with the music traditions on which he was reared while growing up in a trailer on an acreage in rural northern California. The result is an emo-meets-outlaw Americana love letter—like Justin Vernon and Townes Van Zandt locked in a cabin in the Sierra Nevada for months—with phosphorescent synths, hushed vocals, and hardy guitar work.
It’s the work of a musician who left a childhood of no electricity and creek-swimming, lived the indie rock dream, and has now returned home with nothing left to prove.
“I couldn’t have written this when I was growing up where I grew up,” Vann says. “Now, I’m going back to it, and writing from a place that’s not just, ‘I’m a guy from out in the middle of nowhere in the mountains.’ Instead, it’s someone who’s lived a little, and come back.”
The record was created under similarly humble conditions. “Shuffle Around,” the record’s darling, moseying lead single, came about one night in Vann’s old Harlem apartment shortly after lockdown was enforced. Vann switched a mic on and let it roll. The rest of the record followed that track, and was completed in two weeks. The recording setup was simple: “It was just me and my dog Bess laying down by my side,” says Vann.
This writing and recording style recalled Vann’s roots. “I started as a teenager writing songs with just a guitar and piano,” he says. That evolved into From Indian Lakes, a band of quiet, rural-living friends that went from tinkering in Nowhere, California to warming up concert halls on tour with bands like The Maine, Relient K, and Balance and Composure. “We’ve always been the most boring guys on tour,” laughs Vann, adding that conservative rednecks are always shocked to meet “someone as liberal and progressive as I am who out-rednecks them.”
Vann grew up listening first to country stalwarts like Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, and Jim Croce. The down-trodden anti-heroes littered throughout their catalogues were natural thematic fits for Vann’s settings. “I grew up in a trailer with no electricity, no heat or air conditioning, just a generator for weekends if we wanted to put a VHS in,” he says. “My parents didn’t choose to have that kind of life, it’s not like they were really into nature or something. We were just dirt poor.” To pass the time, Vann would read, swim in creeks, and eventually scored a drum kit. Later, he turned to 2000s indie titans like Feist and Sufjan Stevens.
The fingerprints of this upbringing and its clash of influence are all over TK. The songs are meticulous but unintrusive, layered with a sort of humility and selflessness. “For You” opens the record on Alex Cameron-esque synth roots under Vann’s pillowy vocals, and follow-up “Shuffle Around” meanders through scenes of social alienation while a dazed acoustic guitar keeps time. “Your Love” is an acoustic pop gem, with a Shawn Mendes-ready chorus inflected with Vann’s relaxed affect. “Has To Go” is textbook mid-oughts indie folk, with bashful piano keys hopping behind Vann’s fingerpicking and brushed percussion.
The record’s narrative bent is romantic and rose-tinted, opting out of expectation and serving instead as a series of snapshots of relationships to home, others, and self. There are songs about Vann’s work building his new home, and others about connection with his partner; they’re a marked departure from the self-serious thematic pressures of the indie rock world. “When you’re in the indie rock space, you have to be very serious or extremely playful,” says Vann. “But people don’t bring up Hank Williams and Dolly Parton enough when it comes to the conversation about emotional music. They were essentially indie-emo-folk artists before anybody in the ‘90s started pioneering any kind of emo sounds.”
TK is a reconnection with childhood, with California, and with simplicity in a time when the quality is nearly impossible to get at. In an era where companies are pushing for maximum growth and bosses are squeezing every drop out of their workers, Vann produced a record that works at its own pace. “Especially when you’re younger, you have a lot to prove,” says Vann. “There’s something very freeing about coming out the other side with nothing else to prove.”
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From Indian Lakes is the project of California-based singer/songwriter Joey Vannucchi. Growing up on 40 acres of land near Yosemite National Park, the multi-instrumentalist first gravitated toward drums, playing in various bands throughout his youth before eventually focusing on guitar and songwriting. Intricate rhythms continued to be a major feature of his thoughtful post-rock sound and at age 20, he began recording songs at a friend’s studio in the neighboring town of Indian Lakes. Initially releasing the material under the name Songs from Indian Lakes, Vannucchi shortened it after recruiting a group of musicians to begin playing live.
“Sometimes you just gotta go straight to the elevator pitch: what if the xx came up on American Football instead of Aaliyah? Though his post-production methods put him within the scope of downtempo, monastic R&B, Joey Vannucchi uses the compositional tools of twinkly, technical emo—clean guitar figures criss-crossed in askew time signatures, hopscotching drum rhythms, hushed vocals piecing together desires for someone always out of the frame.” – Pitchfork
CONTACT INFORMATION
Kyle Griner
Management
kyle@hrd8wrk.com
Ryan Edmundson (UTA) Agent
Ryan.Edmundson@unitedtalent.com
Jamie Coletta Publicist
Jamie@noearbuds.com