Premiere: Crown Plaza, ‘Perfect People’

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Crown Plaza
Crown Plaza

Crown Plaza originated as the electronic music side project of So Many Wizards’ Nima Kazerouni, who named it in honor of those not-so-halcyon days when he had taken up residence in a room at a rental car agency near LAX, affording him only a view of the Crowne Plaza hotel. Over time, Crown Plaza reverted to a more organic sound and expanded to include guitarist James Roehl, bassist Martin Roark (Tomemitsu) and drummer-background vocalist Christina Gaillard (HIPS).

“Perfect People” is the latest single from the dream-pop quartet’s debut album, which arrives in early 2019. The sprite but melancholic guitar track casts a wary eye on those who seem to have it all — including “baking powder in your noses” — with the boy/girl vocals from Kazerouni and Gaillard waxing nostalgic about how places can change. “This song is about facades,” Kazerouni says. “We all have our secrets and elements that we are hiding from the public eye. It’s about my hometown and how it continues to change … ultimately, for the worse.”

The hometown in question is idyllic Manhattan Beach, where Kazerouni attended school as a “permit kid,” commuting from across town. “Since the very beginning, it was a hard to relate to what appeared to be perfect families compared to my own dysfunctional family,” he explains. “As time trudged on however, I experienced first-hand that appearances are deceiving. That being said, I very much embraced the pockets of charm this beach town had to offer. Fast forward some 15 years, I’ve seen this town piece by piece get recycled by the richer and prettier, and today it’s pretty much spiraled out of control. This place is now for the ultra-ultra millionaires. I can only imagine the dark the secrets some these ‘perfect people’ must be hiding.”

||| Stream: “Perfect People”

||| Also: Stream “This Year Could Be a Movie”

||| Previously: “Staring at the Wall,” “Reactor,” “Frontside”