Kevin Bronson on July 9th, 2020

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When life gives you lemons, you turn them into … a swaggering rock ’n’ roll cocktail that goes down easy.

That’s how 17-year-old wunderkind Christian Gisborne works. The singer-songwriter and frontman of the L.A. trio Velvet Starlings has squeezed out two seven-song EPs in two years, both tall tumblers of British Invasion-flavored psychedelia with garage-rock immediacy and reading-room sophistication.

“Karmic Lemonade,” from 2019’s “Love Everything, Love Everyone” EP, comes with a monster hook and a gleaming Hammond organ as Gisborne disentangles the emotions of a lost romance and the need to move forward. The song, he says, “is about a relationship’s ability to go from sweet to sour. It’s like an ice-cold sip of lemonade when things are good.”

Speaking of good times, idyllic Laurel Canyon is the main locale for director Joseph Calhoun’s video for “Karmic Lemonade,” which co-stars Olivia Villalobos. It’s like watching a break-up between refills: Gisborne takes on all the instruments, takes in the view, takes inventory of the good times in his journal and, finally, takes a long, cool drink of closure.

||| Watch: The video for “Karmic Lemonade”

||| Previously: “Kids in Droves,” “If Life Ain’t Getting You High”

||| Also: Stream “Love Everything, Love Everyone” in its entirety