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Tanlines debut Mixed Emotions out on March 20th. Brothers MP3 now available
Brooklyn, NY’s Tanlines will release their debut album, Mixed Emotions, on True Panther Sounds on March 20th.
It was recorded in various NYC home studios and mixed in Miami by legendary mixing engineer Jimmy Douglass (Timbaland, Aaliyah, Justin Timberlake, Television, Roxy Music).
Mixed Emotion’s first taste, “Brothers,” is available for download from their site streamed below.
Tanlines- Brothers
Anyone well-versed with New York City’s diverse music scene knows Mixed Emotions is a long time coming. Since their first song hit the web in 2008, Tanlines – comprised of Eric Emm (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Jesse Cohen (drums, keyboards, bass) – have been steadily releasing genius dance singles with labels across the globe, including True Panther, Young Turks and Kitsune. Their live show has taken them worldwide, playing at the likes of The Guggenheim, The Whitney and more in their hometown, as well as an opening slot on Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas’s solo tour in 2009. But it was an ill-fated European tour – filled with some of the most disappointing shows of their careers – that ultimately led to Mixed Emotion’s genesis.
The band spent long hours driving through Europe, listening to albums by R.E.M., skate punk records from the 80’s, Born in the USA, and more. As Eric explains it, “Listening to them, I became very aware of the lasting resonance of a good song. A good song transcends production trends. That’s what we were missing, and I wanted to start making songs that could last forever.”
The band returned from Europe only to be greeted with a larger problem: making such songs in Emm’s studio, which was not only the place where they created, but the place where they met prior to forming the band, would be impossible; the building that housed his eight year old studio had been sold. It is ultimately this sense of starting over that helps informs some of Mixed Emotion’s most palpable moments.
Mixed Emotions is a testament to the benefits and pitfalls of life’s changes, getting older, and being pushed out of one’s comfort zone. The band that was born out of a studio suddenly had to become, well, a band. Songs were written simply on a guitar, with the band later adding their palette of electronic and organic sounds afterwards. Emm honed his voice, a confident and tranquil baritone, and focused on lyricism, something he had not done seriously in the past. He sings stories about loss, the passage of time, and the lessons and warnings of accumulated knowledge gleaned by someone who has spent an entire lifetime in music. The process stretched the duo – Cohen likened making the album to that of making a film when it was done – and Mixed Emotions is all the better for it.
Sometimes painful, sometimes transcendent, and ultimately a very precise labor of love, Mixed Emotions simply feels vivid. Songs pulse and linger, filled with percussive textures, bright, warm synths and driving kick drums to juxtapose the album’s lyrical melancholia. The record obscures and blurs the lines between synthetic and organic, real and fake, happy and sad. It is the sound of stadium pop in small spaces. And it is one of the most remarkable debut albums you will hear in 2012.
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