Boardwalk – A Safe Haven by Renko Heuer for Lowdown Magazine, published August 2013 in issue #87. Lodown is a print magazine which has also just launched an iPad app. Grab it: lodownmagazine.com/ipad
Sometimes the best things arrive in the form of a tiny,
thin layer of plastic: Boardwalk from Silverlake have
merely put out a single limited edition Flexidisc Stones
Throw Records released together with LA Record, but it
was easy enough to get us all excited about them. The
track’s called “I’m to Blame” (of course they are) and
it combines everything that’s great about hazy, sensual ,
late-night shoe-gazy dream pop – think early Beach House
think softer Broadcast, think Mazzy Star, think that one time you were counting shooting stars on the beach at
night. It’s like a sonic backrub, like a four minute ride
on a water slide, like summer in a photo your parents shot
a few decades back. Jesus, it’s sexy, like making out in
slow motion. In other words, it’s pure nostalgia on (thin)
plastic. And yet: “We’re trying not to live in the past,”
they claim. Well, they’ve probably got a great future lying
ahead, that’s for sure.
Turns out Boardwalk’s a duo, at least for now, comprised
of a certain Mike Edge and singer Amber Quintero,
who, she explains, only met in February 2012 when
“Mike came over to my house with a mutual musician friend
of ours.”
A year and few weeks later, and the first self-titled
album is already finished and slated for a fall release
on Peanut Butter Wolf’s fine label, a great though somewhat
unlikely home for them. “The album was actually done before
we signed with Stones Throw,” she offers. “We simply
emailed them through their website. We are now working
on the second album,” Amber explains, adding that they
haven’t been working with anyone else apart from occasional
guest Mark Noseworthy (Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic
Zeros), as they “are pretty obsessed with each other at
the moment.” That we can certainly understand.
Coming back to the line-up, she adds: “Yeah, officially,
it’s Mike and me. Mark (Noseworthy) is on tour for
many months out of the year; but we take advantage of his
lead guitar parts whenever he’s in LA.” Said lead guitar
parts are about as important to their seductively haunting
sepia sound as her voice, but since main songwriter
Mike’s apparently a bit of a prodigy who also makes custom
gear (whereas Amber makes “organic green smoothies” on
the Side), there’s probably a lot of understated wizardry
at work, so maybe that’s what’s getting us so hyped right
now. If not, the answer might be hidden in their dreams,
and in their willingness to share them: “I have recurring
dreams of being killed by whales in various ways,” Amber
says, “Mike sleepwalks.”
While we’re waiting for more reverb awesomeness to wash
over us when the sun sadly disappears for the next eternal
winter, the two Beatles lovers who “are not really connected with anyone in the LA scene” because they “rarely
leave the house” already have bigger dreams for the future:
“To make enough money to buy our own farm where we can write music in the wilderness.”
Boardwalk’s flexi “I’m do Blame” is now a 45. Their album will be released in October.
