Premiere: s//p (Slip), ‘Head on Backwards’

Kevin Bronson on November 7th, 2017

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The first single from Los Angeles singer-songwriter s//p (pronounced “Slip”) is ostensibly about how hard it is to face the future, especially with your “Head on Backwards.” It’s the solo venture of Taylor Brown, onetime bassist in the late, great L.A. rockers Vanaprasta and later for Sun Drug. Brown has been working on the songs for a long time but only in the past year has gotten serious about finishing them, enlisting Jules de Gasperis as co-producer, mixer and drummer and working at his Highland Park studio.

“Head on Backwards” will appear on s//p’s album “The Cost,” which includes contributions from several of Brown’s friends from around the scene, including former bandmate Collin Desha (now doing business in his own project Low Hum). In fact, the single, which builds from a shimmering synth track to a full-on rocker with a deep groove, features the guitar work of Andrew Martin of Moon Honey. At the crescendo, Brown rants about a topsy-turvy world where heads are buried in the sand and “information is compromised.” As double negatives go, “I can’t unsee my feed enough,” is brilliant, and the truth.

As for the name s//p, Brown says: “What I like about the name is that the materiality of the text matches the meaning of the word — ‘s//p’ looks like it’s literally slipping away from itself before course correcting at the end. Also, I like the way it looks. I could have picked a, you know, traditional ‘word,’ I guess, but those are all basically taken. Feel the collective naming-a-band-in-2017 pain.”

||| Stream: “Head on Backwards”