As Boy Scouts, Oakland-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Taylor Vick makes the kind of music that hits like good advice from a beloved friend. It’s generously warm and inviting, built atop her open, searching voice, but it doesn’t shy away from tough emotional truths.
Vick’s songs survey the damage that can come from loving other people with curiosity and grace. Her new album, Free Company – her first for ANTI- Records set for an August 30th release – is her most vital and incisive work yet, a stunningly tuneful rumination on heartbreak and loss that is always galloping toward the horizon. So far, two singles have been released as tasters of the record to come.
Watch Taylor perform “Get Well Soon” on a couch floating through Los Angeles via balloons; the video was directed by Ramez Silyan (Lil Peep). Watch Taylorcelebrate her birthday surrounded by friends in the new music video for “Expiration Date”. Her producer Stephen Steinbrink joins her in the clip, contributing harmony vocals to the song; Madeline Kenney (Hand Habits) directed the video.
The album’s opener, “Get Well Soon” reckons with the difficult epiphany that comes when you’ve worked overtime to help someone you love, only to realize they won’t meet you in the middle and help themselves. “It’s a hard thing to say. You’re hoping somebody will eventually feel better, but there’s also this weird new distance between you. You can’t do anything else, but you still really hope that they’re OK,” Vick says.
With its jangly electric guitar chords and sky-high vocal melodies, “Expiration Date” tackles that universal human quandary of impermanence.“Everything changes all the time. Nothing will last forever,” says Vick. “It’s such a hard concept to grasp because we just get so attached to things and people and situations. But stuff can’t stay how it is forever. That’s also to be said about bad stuff that happens. It won’t weigh you down forever.”
Her tightest and most cohesive collection of songs, Vick recorded Free Company in a tiny studio her friend Stephen Steinbrink set up inside a rented shipping container–a unique spot that ended up being perfect for her. “It’s a windowless little room, but that made me feel really comfortable,” she says. “We did it in the comfort of a weird, atypical recording space.”
Steinbrink plays drums, synth, and bass throughout the record in addition to singing backup. It was the first time Vick had opened up her recording process to someone besides herself, and the inclusion of her friends (Rose Droll, Nikolas Soelter, and Chase Kamp also contributed to the album) helped her polish Boy Scouts’ indie pop sound to a sparkle.
With a keen ear for melody and a palpable sense of empathy, Vick picks apart all the confusing and contradictory ways that people glance off of each other while moving through their lives. Her music is an invitation to shake off the weight that’s been dragging you down, to lighten your step and keep moving forward no matter what lies ahead.
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