Premiere: Night Click, ‘The Drug Store Ceiling’

Kevin Bronson on May 19th, 2017

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Night Click is the vehicle for singer-songwriter Michael Klics, a New Jersey native who formerly made music as Able Hands, relocated to Southern California two years ago and wields a wry lyrical bite wherever he casts his eye. Which, on his first single “The Drug Store Ceiling,” is the L.A. life, always fine fodder for absurdist commentary. “I remember the song coming together one September afternoon at my sister’s house in Van Nuys,” Klics says. “I’d just arrived in Los Angeles a few weeks prior and as I paced between the air-conditioned home and the secluded yet sweltering backyard, I felt particularly well armed with imagery to construct it out of.”

It’s something you might hear from Randy Newman if he were a twentysomething fronting an indie band. “The Drug Store Ceiling” is the title track to an album (arriving July 21) that Klics made with Rilo Kiley’s Pierre de Reeder at the now-shuttered Kingsize North studio. Adam Pumilia (ex-Delicate Steve) and Tyler Cash (Mayer Hawthorne) are among the players on the album. On the single, amid lush instrumentation, Klics sings plaintively, “From the top of Griffith Park / I can smell the dreams decay / Smells so sweet I just might stay.” Our olfactories have enjoyed that view too.

||| Stream: “The Drug Store Ceiling”