To listen to a Current Joys song is to be immersed fully in Nick Rattigan’s world. An avid consumer of cinema, a visual artist as much as he is a musician, Rattigan’s music is tactile, its imagery and sonics conceived simultaneously. It’s unclear where the films Rattigan is inspired by stop and his personal life starts, but the blending is what makes Voyager so remarkable.

Voyager, the seventh LP from Current Joys, rattles with the live-wire feeling that’s thrummed through all of Rattigan’s previous releases: a quavering, scream-itself-hoarse vocals and self-in-terrogation via song. But here, that bristling, sentimental rock‘n’roll cacophony is overlaid with a soundtrack orchestra guiding it along. It’s an odyssey, a grand-sounding journey of self-discovery spread across sixteen tracks. Part ekphrasis, part personal, it’s Rattigan learning new ways to understand his own feelings and identity while inspired by the highly-stylized, striking storytelling of filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock, Lars Von Trier, Terrence Malick, Agnès Varda, and Andrei Tarkovsky. Voyager is unlike anything Current Joys has released before.

On his new LP, Rattigan eschews lo-fi home recordings for a full band and recording sessions at Stinson Beach Studios. As a vocalist/drummer in his other band Surf Curse, Rattigan had finally opened up to the possibility of working in a professional studio: “I’d just been very stubborn in wanting to do it all my own way, but I guess I’ve kind of opened up the creative process to more people at this point,” Rattigan explains. “ And I think it yields better results.”

Since 2013 Current Joys’ output has been prolific. A Nevada native, Rattigan began Current Joys in Reno, before moving to New York after school and busting his ass working as a production assistant in the film/TV industry. He’d play Current Joys shows to dismal audiences around New York, and found himself increasingly drawn to Los Angeles’ scene instead. He relocated to LA in 2016, and the songs that make up Voyager began coming together shortly after.

Each piece of Current Joys’ previous discography is wholly built and envisioned by Rattigan, self-recorded and quickly released, quivering with a lonely intensity. Within six months of beginning the project, Current Joys had already released its debut, Wild Heart; by 2018, the sixth Current Joys full length and visual album, A Different Age, was out. All the while, Current Joys’ profile quickly and quietly ascended, selling out venues like LA’s El Rey along with European tours, simultaneously amassing millions of streams of the catalog, and a dedicated following.

But while the audiences and songwriting/recording approaches changed and continue to evolve for Current Joys, the inspiration Rattigan draws from cinema remains a guiding force.

“Something that naturally sort of happened was watching movies and being inspired by them so writing a song about the content of that movie,” Rattigan explains. “But it started to influence me more spiritually when I went to this double feature of Tarkovsky. They were showing The Mirror and Nostalgia at the New Beverly, and just watching those movies made me realize how there’s different ways to communicate music, or communicate art. Obviously with Tarkovsky it’s in a very surreal but spiritual and intense form, and I tried sort of mimicking that feeling into music instead of visuals. I started reading directors’ autobiographies—I’ve always taken way more from what directors do vs. what other musicians do.”

Frequently he uses film as a jumping off point for songwriting. “Big Star” was written on tour after watching Adventureland, hoping to capture that specific endless youth energy of the soundtrack’s Replacements and Big Star songs. “Amateur” is piano-heavy, a slow-build of tension, flitting with prettiness, while the creeping “Rebecca,” named after the Hitchcock film before Rattigan had actually seen it, radiates a haunted, sinister presence; “Naked” feels almost unhinged, while “American Honey” is a longing, mellowed lament. The title track, “Voyager pt. 2,” holds a sparse, near-funereal starkness, as well as the album’s thesis: I’m a voyager in my mind, before the Spielberg-esque strings swell. Somehow, the amalgamation of tone fits. Rattigan, who stays up all night to perfect the sequencing of his records once they’re recorded, doesn’t set out with a typical aesthetic in mind – instead, it just happens. Performing is his catharsis. Which feels palpable on Voyager; there’s fragments of hours spent watching movies, as well as stories from his own life; there’s overly-caffeinated car rides blasting the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa; there’s inspiration taken from the crooning presence of frontmen like Jeff Buckley, Chris Isaak, and Nick Cave, as evidenced on Rattigan’s cover of the Boys Next Door’s “Shivers.” And there’s the simple, ecstatic energy of getting a bunch of friends in the studio. It’s all held together by the fervor of Rattigan’s creative process. He believes in the premonitory power of music, and he latches onto the song ideas that strike him in the moment, propelled by an abstract existentialism or burst of feeling more than anything else. It imbues Voyager with an intensity and intimacy – with the sense that you’re getting to hear, all at once, the disparate parts that make a project – or person – into a sprawling, cinematic whole.

 

Brooklyn-based Fire Talk Records is proud to announce the release of Dark Tea’s latest full-length studio album, Dark Tea. The twelve-track collection expands the group’s sound from their previous LP (also called Dark Tea), further exploring the cinematic visions and twangy folk narratives of Dark Tea bandleader Gary Canino. It’s the product of a tangled web of confidantes, collaborators, guides, and inspirations, each of whom helped usher in the new album. But first: Gary who? Born and raised in Huntington, NY, Gary’s quiet Long Island youth gave him access to all of the pleasures and distractions of New York City. “As a teenager, seeing The Walkmen play at Webster Hall in 2007, or Leonard Cohen at Radio City Music Hall in 2008 had a pretty big impact on me.” After college at the University of Virginia (stomping grounds of the legendary Steve Malkmus and David Berman), Canino made his way to Brooklyn in 2011. He played bass with post-punk revivalists Rips, recording and touring their debut album with Austin Brown (Parquet Courts), forming Dark Tea in 2016. Fire Talk Records, a label known for left-field rockers like Pure X and Dehd, issued the first Dark Tea LP in 2019, mixed by Jarvis Taveniere of Woods and featuring memorable guitar work from Meg Duffy of Hand Habits. Certain angels and allies have personally mentored Canino along the way, in particular Andrew Cedermark from Titus Andronicus (“Andrew’s lyric sheets read well, he’s a total shredder, and was a major influence on my songwriting”) and Gary’s older sister, Mattie Canino of Olympia punks RVIVR (“She basically taught me how to play guitar”). The Walkmen link comes full circle for the new LP. Several tracks were recorded during sessions at Philadelphia’s Silent Partner Studio with Matt Barrick, drummer for The Walkmen, plus additional recording at New York’s Artifact Audio with punk veteran Sasha Stroud. Which brings us to the new material. Dark Tea (also known as II and/or Crowd) is a record of deeply personal, interior reflections – the “stream-of-consciousness ramblings of a neurotic,” as Gary puts it – contrasted with the wide open spaces of an idyllic American soundscape. Album opener “Tears Down the Road” ambles along with a sun-kissed grace, brought to life with pedal steel and barrelhouse piano, nodding to Pavement’s meta-country classic “Range Life.” Buttressed by a lilting flugelhorn arrangement, “Highway Mile” channels the spirit of 80s indie visionaries Felt. (Side note: Gary enlisted Felt bandleader Lawrence to DJ a Dark Tea live set back in 2019. “Loop your songs and keep practicing your guitar parts!” was his sole feedback.) “Deanna” unearths childhood memories like a geological excavation, while “Down for the Law” features a blistering guitar solo from Gary, fuzz pedals set to stun. Lately Gary’s efforts have extended beyond the score and into the visual, channeling his Cassavetes obsession into discrete works of short-form filmmaking. He’s made music videos for Dark Tea singles “Deanna,” “Highway Mile,” and “Down for the Law,” and he’s also behind the lens for upcoming tracks by Current Joys and The Berries. It’s a continuation of the Dark Tea vision: creativity, commitment, nurturing a sense of wonder through the haze of nostalgia, while looking toward the future. By Bob Maynard