Kevin Bronson on June 11th, 2020

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Filipino artist Idris Vicuña makes music under the name Eyedress, embracing genres ranging from dream-pop to rap to post-punk to R&B to the “wavy-soul” of newer artists such Cuco and Inner Wave. He figures to be easier to pin down on the album he announced today, “Let’s Skip to the Wedding,” which he says “is for everyone who wants to be in a serious relationship … real [simple] shit.”

“Let’s Skip the Wedding,” due Aug. 7 on Lex Records, is his fifth album and the first he will release after moving back to Southern California from the Philippines. Vicuña originally came to the U.S. at age 6 when his parents emigrated to Phoenix, and he lived in San Clemente for some of his teenage years before moving to Manila and playing in the band Bee Eyes. He launched Eyedress in 2012, with one of his early EPs getting released on the XL Recordings affiliate Abeano.

He won acclaim for two albums that whiplashed between aesthetics, “Shapeshifter” (2015) and “Manila Ice” (2017), before releasing the overlong collection of bedroom meditations “Sensitive G” in 2018 and packing his bags to move back to the U.S.

Last year brought the release of the single “Jealous,” which sounds like it was extricated from a vault of early post-punk. It appears on the new album, along with a handful of other recent singles, including “Can I See You Tonight?,” released today.

“I was influenced by The Wake, Wild Nothing, cold-wave shit,” he says. “Me and my girlfriend made it a while ago before she moved to L.A. She would visit me from Vegas and we recorded this during one of her visits. The song is about the early times when I started seeing my girlfriend; all the first dates and wanting to see her really bad every day and every night. The feeling of wanting to be together all the time and falling in love.”

||| Stream: “Can I See You Tonight?,” “Let’s Skip the Wedding,” “Jealous”