Ears Wide Open: Sofa City Sweetheart

Kevin Bronson on December 14th, 2018

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Sofa City Sweetheart (Photo by Karma McCartney)

For the first minute of their brisk ditty “Stop the Thinking,” you think you’ve got Sofa City Sweetheart all figured out: Here’s a lovelorn power-popper making the kind of sweet ’60s- and ’70s-influenced guitar music that never gets old.

Then the mariachi trumpet kicks in and you just wanna give Juan Antonio Lopez a high-five.

“Stop the Thinking” is Sofa City Sweetheart’s first release in six years. Lopez has wrestled some difficult times: His godfather died; his 2-year-old niece battled (and recovered from) a brain tumor; his college music professor ridiculed his compositions; his band broke up; and his girlfriend moved away. He says the title of his previous biography was “Sofa City Sweetheart: A Tradition of Failure.”

Live, Lopez (who writes, records and engineers his music himself and released Sofa City Sweetheart’s first EP in 2008) is joined by guitarist Justin Trabue, drummer Kenny Lockwood and bassist Jonathan Caro.

||| Watch: The video for “Stop the Thinking”