Dearly beloved,
It’s been two years since we moved to Portland, filed as an LLC with LegalZoom, paid LegalZoom to become our registered agent, figured out that we didn’t need an external registered agent, spent hours on the phone with LegalZoom trying to get our money back, and finally hired a real lawyer.
Since then we’ve been fortunate enough to do PR and development for over 40 great release campaigns. We’ve had huge victories and painful failures, but at our company’s core, we’re still just two small, sometimes unbathed people sitting hunched in front of computers 50+ hours a week. Breakup has been and continues to be a dream come true.
As you may have noticed, we’re starting a blog. We have the pleasure of sharing the wonderful shows and press coverage our bands enjoy, but seldom do we get to let the world see “the love behind the scenes”. Our new blog will be aimed at offering insight into the work we do alongside our bands, and what the music we champion means to Alex and me.
And what better band to christen our blog with than HEARTWATCH.
We began working with these guys last year when they were in their proto stage under the name The Tropics. Through the release of two videos and a wonderful record, they grew really fast, both in their confidence as a creative/professional unit and in their status and visibility as up-and-comers in the Bay Area and national scene.
My favorite thing about this band is their ability to deliver over-the-top hilarious video content while releasing gorgeous, sincere songs.
A brilliant example of this is the video for Fireproof - a shot for shot remake of the Good Vibrations video with Marky Mark, which premiered on Stereogum. Singer Claire George gives a knockout performance (no pun intended), but for me the crown jewel of this video is the ridiculous choreographed dance sequence the band learned and flawlessly executed.
HEARTWATCH is having a killer summer. They played a show-stopping set at the Bay Bridged’s Phono Del Sol Festival, released an incredible new single (below), and are gearing up to play at Outside Lands Music Festival in San Francisco this weekend on Saturday August 8th.
And finally this: Following their recent name change, the band made an instructional video + sticker kits to help fans convert their The Tropics vinyl into HEARTWATCH vinyl. I love a band in goggles.
I’d also like to talk a little bit about SF’s The Silhouette Era, a band we began working with in December of last year. After months of long-distance phone meetings and emails, Alex and I finally had the pleasure of meeting singer/frontman Carlos Gonzalez at Leo’s in Oakland in June.
He showed up early and stayed late talking with us about music and laughing about the internet and even brought us a beautiful vinyl record of the band’s new album Beacons (out tomorrow on Breakup!), which we had already been enjoying through computer speakers for six months.
The next day, we all drove north to the fifth annual Davis Music Fest. We wandered around sweltering Davis, drinking delicious microbrews and watching incredible sets from Breakup bands Taxes, Rich Girls, and BONNIE AND THE BANG BANG. As it approached midnight, we hit fro-yo. My rad little brother (a newly-licensed driver in CA - beware!!) and his best buddy also came up and partied with us. It was what young people sometimes refer to as “fun”, so I guess that’s what we did on our summer vacation.
But about this record.
Beacons has been a pleasure to work. It premiered last week with enthusiastic bi-coastal coverage from San Francisco’s The Bay Bridged, and Boston-based Vanyaland. Driven by the incessancy of countless perfect guitar hooks and the tragic, airy call of singer Carlos Gonsalez, the appeal of this record is a complete no-brainer. I’m gonna say it: not every project needs to be a challenge.