Kevin Bronson on September 22nd, 2020

0

After seven hiatus-interrupted years that included two albums and two EPs, “brat-pop” duo Holychild went their separate ways early this year, with onetime George Washington University schoolmates Liz Nistico and Louie Diller saying they aimed to pursue solo projects.

This week, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and producer Diller pulled back the curtain on his, releasing his first single as Louie Louie!.

“All Fall Down” sounds like a party, talks about a party and asks one of those five-beer questions you’d hear at a party: “When we all fall down / will we turn into something else?” he asks in the shout-along chorus.

It’s a query worth some sober thought, which, in recent years, Diller has had ample cause for. “In 2016, I went from making half a million dollars to food stamps after a whole lot of financial mismanagement, classic music biz shitshow and some,” he explains. “That same year I also had my heart broken by a girl, who I thought I was going to marry, and found myself living next door to the Mexican mafia in East L.A., who were hustling me every other day. That same year my dad came down with cancer, and though he thankfully beat that shit, for most of 2016 it wasn’t clear if he’d survive. And then Trump got elected. Out of all this, Louie Louie! was born.”

It’s the first single from his full-length “Heartbreak in the Fall of the Empire,” which is about as last-four-years as an album title can get. Diller seems to be rising; maybe the empire will follow suit.

||| Stream: “All Fall Down”