Kevin Bronson on September 4th, 2015

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Like the string of singles Street Joy released as an EP in January, the L.A. duo’s new music is beholden to no particular genre. It’s as if a riff or idea appears out of thin air, and singer-guitarist-bassist Jason DeMayo and drummer-singer Scott Zimmerman traipse of down a path that finds them channeling history’s more recent indie greats (i.e., the Strokes, early Spoon), or ’60s soul, or early garage-pop — always with an unfussy production approach. In their new creative surge, they’ve been working and experimenting at All Welcome Records and at Big Bad Sound studios, ending up with a batch of new songs that “are kinda all over the place,” DeMayo says. “But we think that’s cool for now — it’s transparent. Every time we went in to record a song, we seemed to have a pretty different inspiration, be it an early Beatles track, or a Bee Gees/Michael Jackson vibe. But the overall theme of these tracks seems to be angst and anxiety. It’s been an interesting year.” Before they hit the studio to record a proper album later this year, Street Joy will unveil nine new songs they’re calling the “Good/Bad Luck Sessions,” because, DeMayo says, “it’s not an album, and not quite an EP — it’s just a collection of songs that are the result of our time at All Welcome.” And the first of the series is the raw-boned “Telephone,” which thematically recalls the Nerves’ gem (later covered by Blondie), “Hanging on the Telephone.” Says DeMayo: “It’s basically about the anxiety that comes from waiting for a phone call/text from someone that is important to you. People can leave you hanging, and that always blows.”

||| Stream: “Telephone”

||| Previously: “Long Time Ago,” “Wrong Cloud,” “Same As Me”