Stream: Lionel Boy, ‘Mango Michelada’

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Lionel Boy (Photo by Basil Vargas)

Make ready your mellow: Lionel Boy — the solo project of Oahu-bred singer-songwriter Lionel Deguzman — will release his self-titled debut album on May 14 via Innovative Leisure.

After introducing the album earlier this year with “Flower Girl,” Lionel Boy has followed up with two singles, “Kam Highway” and “Mango Michelada,” each exemplary of his dreamy, synth-saturated pop-soul.

The latter is the album closer, a song that was started before the pandemic and, like the album, finished during lockdown. “Last February, I moved into a rehearsal space in San Pedro,” Lionel Boy says. “The space reeked of Fabreze and various chemicals they used to mask the smell of stale cigarettes. My drummer Jacqueline and I would mess around for hours in that space singing nonsense. At the time, we were in the habit of drinking Mango Micheladas at every session. On one of those days, we started out cracking jokes and ended up with a song we couldn’t stop working on. COVID-19 hit about a week later and I ended up having to move out of the studio, but we continued to work on this track throughout the pandemic.”

Lionel Boy worked with producer Jonny Bell at Long Beach’s Jazzcat Studios on the album, made with a cast of players including Fred Garbutt (synths); bassists Nic Gonzales, Andrew Pham and Sam Wilkes; drummer Brett Kramer; keyboardist Sarah Hinesly; and percussionist Andres Renteria.

||| Stream: “Mango Michelada”

||| Also: Watch the video for “Kam Highway”

||| Previously: “Flower Girl,” “Lately” / “Are You Happy Yet?”