Stream: Ryan Pollie, ‘Blackout’

Kevin Bronson on April 2nd, 2018

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Did somebody finally call the cops or something? In early March, singer-songwriter Ryan Pollie announced he had dispatched the band name Los Angeles Police Department after two albums and four-plus years. Future releases will be issued under the name that uses far fewer keystrokes, Ryan Pollie, and today the first one arrived. Not surprisingly, it sounds like LAPD.

“Blackout” was written in a fit of guilt over his own lack of self-control. “Occasionally I will go super hard with friends, and this song was written and recorded the day after my friend’s birthday party,” Pollie explains. “I black out kind of easily, and then the next day I get super down and go through a lot of self-loathing. Alcohol really affects my brain chemistry. The song does not really have an agenda, but is more just written about my experience of that day and what I was feeling. Canceling plans, apologizing to friends.”

As far as the name change and where Pollie is coming from, he adds: “My new material was influenced mostly by songwriters of the early ’70s in both California and Japan. Whether it was Jackson Browne, Carole King or Graham Nash. Kenji Endo, Yumi Arai or Sachiko Kanenobu. At that time, songwriters were not hiding behind a band name or creating a persona for their art. The music was completely tied to who they actually were, total vulnerability. I just found that really appealing — like I don’t have to be selling something, it’s just me.”

The self-titled Los Angeles Police Department album came out last year via Anti- Records.

||| Stream: “Blackout”