Kevin Bronson on November 7th, 2019

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Should the retailers behind Record Store Day need a spokesperson, they should look no further than Communicant’s Dylan Gardner.

Vinyl shops have served as milestones for the 22-year-old singer-songwriter, from his early childhood to key moments in evolution of his new band and the making of Communicant’s debut album, arriving in 2020.

Gardner, a wunderkind once signed to Warner Records as a teenager, released two solo albums (the last, the long-delayed “Almost Real” in 2018) before announcing earlier this year that he would go forward as Communicant, a four-piece rounded out by Mark Gardner (drums), David Von Bader (guitars) and Anna Carmela (bass). And rather than the pop leanings of his solo albums, the new Communicant music embraces the soulful side of modern psych-pop and its production accoutrements.

While writing songs that found inspiration in the 1960s, Gardner forges a sound that’s distinctly modern, owing in part to co-production by Ben Goldwasser of MGMT. This summer, Communicant announced the imminent release of their debut album — only to delay the album after Gardner was struck by creative lightning and wrote a new batch of songs.

This week, though, Communicant did release the new single “Marie.”

||| Stream: “Marie”

In the Buzz Bands LA interview, Gardner talks about inspiration, exasperation, evolution and how some key trips to the record store helped him become Communicant:

Buzz Bands LA: I know you’ve covered this in interviews before, but can you talk a little about how you got your start? You seemed to know your life’s path from when you just were a wee lad …

Dylan Gardner: My dad was a musician and a songwriter and my mom worked at record stores, so there were quite a lot of influences around the house. And my brother, who is eight years old than me, is a drummer. So there was everything from the Doors to the Beatles to Paul Simon to Nilsson, all the time. I started writing songs after we moved (from Illinois) to Arizona when I was 14. I showed them to my parents and my brother, and they thought they were too good not to be heard, so I got a lot of support from them.

Who would be in your songwriter pantheon then?

Oh, probably too many to mention, but artists like Lennon & McCartney, Brian Wilson, Paul Simon, Elliott Smith, Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, Prince, David Bowie … Those are all people who have a discography that I would trade a lifetime for. They were the whole package.

How did that first record happen, then? And what led you to Warner?

I made my first record when I was 16 — with John Dragonetti of the Submarines — and put it out independently. Spotify was pretty new then, and we put the album up … and the first song (“Let’s Get Started”) got like a million plays very quickly. I got calls from Warner and Atlantic on the very same day. And the album ended up being re-released on Warner.

And suddenly you were the teenager swept up in the major-label experience …

I learned a lot, including the trials and tribulations of being on a big label. From how things work to the experience of them trying to make me into something I’m not. I didn’t want to make music that didn’t feel like me. … I will say that when I was on Warner, I had a false sense of security, you know, because of everybody behind you. But then you’re stuck in a room with a bunch of people who tell you why things aren’t happening. Warner was shaping me to be a Top 40 thing, and I lost sight of who I was. I thought I wouldn’t be successful, that I would be off Warner and nobody would listen.

How does the Dylan on that first record compare to the Dylan of now?

It was an accurate picture of me then.

What are some of the things that happened to put you on your new path?

One thing was when my manager (Geoffrey Weiss) took me to Freakbeat Records and got me three albums — Love’s “Forever Changes,” “The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators” and “Begin” by the Millennium … all released in the 1960s. Those opened me up to psychedelic rock. … I had an epiphany — I wasn’t trapped in the vision somebody had for me when I was 16. It was the most freeing feeling ever.

None of those influences is reflected on the second Dylan Gardner album that came out last year, right?

No, that album was finished in 2016 and it took all that time to get it back from Warner. By 2018, I was already on another path.

And the new songs you had somehow found their way to Ben Goldwasser of MGMT. How did that happen?

We had some mutual friends. Ben heard some demos and gravitated toward the song “Temporary.” And actually, we went record-shopping. He turned me on to some of the ’80s bands he had been listening to, like Let’s Active and OMD. And then I visited his studio and he showed me some ways to grow my songs sonically.

This summer, then, a couple months after the last “Dylan Gardner” show at the Lodge Room, you had the big reveal about Communicant being your new band and about the debut album coming out this fall. Communicant is definitely the new band — but the album? How did it go from done to not done?

I guess I’m just “that guy.” (Laughing) I had gone to a ridiculous amount of trouble, hired a publicist and everything and then when we were in Arizona to do a show, I had an epiphany. Sitting in the tour van, I came up with two more songs, and they made me realize that something was missing, that the album wasn’t there yet. I ended up writing seven new songs in the next two weeks. And I thought, now this finally is starting to sound like my record collection. And I couldn’t go back creatively, even though I had spent all my money.

You’re going to end up with a lot of B-sides …

(Laughing) Yeah, when I’m old I’ll be like Prince, I’ll have a vault.

Where did the name Communicant come from?

It was inspired by the Ingmar Bergman film. I remember when we took some music to Dave Cooley for mixing, he said, “It reminds me of Spacemen 3.” That’s when I knew it was right.

Along with your second wind of musical inspiration, what did you find topically to write about in these new songs?

Initially, a lot of the songs were about everything that is temporary in life. But as I went along, I found myself thinking a lot about isolation and rebirth. This is a very inward-looking album, kind of a peek into the inner workings of my mind, and the process of figuring out who you are.

||| Live: Communicant, along with Night Dreamer, Precious Kid and Covey, plays Saturday night at the Buzz Bands LA 11-Year Anniversary Party at the Hi Hat. Tickets.