Party favours, private jokes, panic, and a pile of battered studio gear: that is the perfume hanging over Suburban Sherpa, the outstanding debut LP from Philly duo Kewl Haze…and it smells pretty great. This record arrives with the loose-limbed confidence of two lifers who have already done their apprenticeships elsewhere, already learned where the fences are, and then decided to hop them with a grin. Dan Scott Forreal and Derek Sheehan make music by finishing each other’s bad ideas and, through a little creative alchemy, improving them in the process.
The album took four years to pull together, and you can hear that span: detours, accidents, half-serious experiments; the psychic debris of living. “We would have a couple of beers before studio sessions, talk about life, and that led to an openness in the studio,” says Forreal, which tells you plenty about the record’s atmosphere: loose enough to breathe, sharp enough to sting.
“A lot of life happened in the span of making the record, some hectic and difficult situations, but we laughed our asses off,” Sheehan reflects. “We took a lighthearted outlook on everything we wrote about.” That spirit runs through the album: even when it brushes up against burnout, excess, or plain old grown-up damage, it keeps a crooked grin on its face.
Throughout Suburban Sherpa, Kewl Haze lets styles collide without turning the album into a museum of borrowed moves. You can catch the paisley sprawl of the late ’60s, the loose-hipped groove of the ’70s, the baggy ecstasy of Madchester, and the bright smirk of 90s Britpop moving through these songs.
“A hip-hop drum break, an 1980s analogue synth, a country guitar thing, a CSNY vocal harmony, an acoustic guitar with a swampy electric beneath – that taken all together sounds like us,” Forreal explains. It sounds like a dare, and they pull it off.
Deep Breathing opens with a woozy uplift that brings Kula Shaker and the Dandy Warhols to mind. Stereo Junkie is the album’s peacock cut, a sugar rush of classic rock riffage, dance beats, fuzzed guitars, and high-flying harmonies that feels beamed out of the Hacienda in its baggy glory, then dragged through a modern beat-freak basement. Vehicular Cuck lands with the sideways sleaze and smirking funk of Midnite Vultures-era Beck, while Surfin’ On That Paradigm summons hazy college memories of Eels. Used To Have It All carries a psychedelic pop glow that recalls MGMT, though Kewl Haze gives it a more lived-in grooviness.
Listen to Suburban Sherpa below:
Kewl Haze’s Derek Sheehan comes from the critically acclaimed dream-pop outfit Weekender; Dan Scott Forreal previously led Colorado psych-funk crew Miscomunicado and later spent time drumming for Mod Sun. You can hear all those roads converging. Add sessions with Matt Barrick of The Walkmen and Jonathan Fire Eater, plus the Silent Partner connection through Quentis Stolzfus and Paul Banks, and you have an album made by people who know how records breathe.
Kewl Haze was created by two guys who know that a little recklessness can save a song from good taste. Suburban Sherpa, the perfect Spring Break escape, jumps behind the wheel and zips us all off to god knows where. Let’s go!
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