Andrew St. James was born the accidental child of The Rolling Stones' tour caterers. After riding the Voodoo Lounge Tour in utero, he was born somewhere in Northern California, and taken in by a family of political lobbyists in San Francisco. Considered a vocal prodigy, St. James developed an early interest in baroque classical music, touring internationally in choirs and by age 11 was singing for the San Francisco Opera. Following the death of his biological father, St. James, then 16, recorded a solo album with a handheld recorder while hitchhiking the Pacific Northwest. The recordings found their way to veteran Bay Area producer Jim Greer (Foster The People, Galactic, Geographer), who in turn began working with St. James on his first proper release. Doldrums, recorded during his senior year of high school, was released September 2013 to critical acclaim.
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Alta California, the new bilingual album by The Soft White Sixties, finds the Los Angeles 5-piece expanding upon their contemporary concoction of rock 'n' roll and soul while also exploring some of their most relevant lyrical content to date (in both English and Spanish).
Produced by Elijah Thomson (Father John Misty, Delta Spirit, Richard Swift), Alta California was written and recorded at New Monkey Studio, a room formerly owned by Elliott Smith, over the course of several sessions that began on Election Night 2016. Lead singer Octavio Genera -- a first generation Mexican-American who grew up in a bilingual Spanish/English family - always wondered what it would be like to sing in Spanish, it just didn't occur to him to try it professionally, and he wasn't sure there was space for it within the band. "Speaking and singing in a language are two different things," says Genera. "There was a feeling of joy and passion when I sang these songs in Spanish that I wasn't expecting. And then hearing the songs back -- it was right."
The sweaty, gyrating energy of their live show has garnered praise from Rolling Stone, Paste Magazine, and LA Weekly over the years and landed them on club and festival bills like Outside Lands, BottleRock, and SXSW, sharing the stage with the likes of The Hives, Rival Sons, The Flaming Lips, and Paul McCartney. But this time around, it all glimmers with a subtle lysergic sheen, thanks in part to Thomson's influence. "Eli was a big proponent of making the studio feel like 2am on a Saturday night at all hours of the day," multi-instrumentalist Aaron Eisenberg explains. "Certain songs called for certain states of mind and sobriety generally didn't factor into the equation."
The band felt it would be irresponsible to develop lyrical content that ignored the inescapable global climate developing literally while the tape was rolling. New territory was explored, as observations on the despair of the American Dream ('Reaganomixxx'), immigration ('Brick by Brick'), gentrification ('I Still Love You, San Francisco'), paradigm shifts ('Teen Wolves'), generational and ideological gaps and what happens when one generation begins to the feel the inevitable changing of the guard crept its way onto the record.
Andrew St. James was born the accidental child of The Rolling Stones' tour caterers. After riding the Voodoo Lounge Tour in utero, he was born somewhere in Northern California, and taken in by a family of political lobbyists in San Francisco. Considered a vocal prodigy, St. James developed an early interest in baroque classical music, touring internationally in choirs and by age 11 was singing for the San Francisco Opera. Following the death of his biological father, St. James, then 16, recorded a solo album with a handheld recorder while hitchhiking the Pacific Northwest. The recordings found their way to veteran Bay Area producer Jim Greer (Foster The People, Galactic, Geographer), who in turn began working with St. James on his first proper release. Doldrums, recorded during his senior year of high school, was released September 2013 to critical acclaim.
----
Alta California, the new bilingual album by The Soft White Sixties, finds the Los Angeles 5-piece expanding upon their contemporary concoction of rock 'n' roll and soul while also exploring some of their most relevant lyrical content to date (in both English and Spanish).
Produced by Elijah Thomson (Father John Misty, Delta Spirit, Richard Swift), Alta California was written and recorded at New Monkey Studio, a room formerly owned by Elliott Smith, over the course of several sessions that began on Election Night 2016. Lead singer Octavio Genera -- a first generation Mexican-American who grew up in a bilingual Spanish/English family - always wondered what it would be like to sing in Spanish, it just didn't occur to him to try it professionally, and he wasn't sure there was space for it within the band. "Speaking and singing in a language are two different things," says Genera. "There was a feeling of joy and passion when I sang these songs in Spanish that I wasn't expecting. And then hearing the songs back -- it was right."
The sweaty, gyrating energy of their live show has garnered praise from Rolling Stone, Paste Magazine, and LA Weekly over the years and landed them on club and festival bills like Outside Lands, BottleRock, and SXSW, sharing the stage with the likes of The Hives, Rival Sons, The Flaming Lips, and Paul McCartney. But this time around, it all glimmers with a subtle lysergic sheen, thanks in part to Thomson's influence. "Eli was a big proponent of making the studio feel like 2am on a Saturday night at all hours of the day," multi-instrumentalist Aaron Eisenberg explains. "Certain songs called for certain states of mind and sobriety generally didn't factor into the equation."
The band felt it would be irresponsible to develop lyrical content that ignored the inescapable global climate developing literally while the tape was rolling. New territory was explored, as observations on the despair of the American Dream ('Reaganomixxx'), immigration ('Brick by Brick'), gentrification ('I Still Love You, San Francisco'), paradigm shifts ('Teen Wolves'), generational and ideological gaps and what happens when one generation begins to the feel the inevitable changing of the guard crept its way onto the record.
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