by Conor Lochrie (@conornoconnor)
April Magazine is a loose collective who belong to the criminally-underrated Paisley Shirt Records in San Francisco (“Listen to "The Boy In The Paisley Shirt" by Television Personalities and you'll get a good idea of what we're about,” their Bandcamp states). The main members of the group are Peter Hurley, Kati Mashikian, David Diaz, Mike Ramos, although often other friends fill in in what is a flexible formation; the members also contribute to other excellent San Fran bands such as Flowertown and The Reds, Pinks & Purples. April Magazine sounds like Galaxie 500 on quaaludes; they’re a more solemn washed-out West Coast sibling of Yo la Tengo.
Their new record, Sunday Music For An Overpass, is subtly beautiful, possessed of a quiet power. These lo-fi dream pop tracks have the potential to bypass one’s senses yet they don’t: instead they remove you from your anxieties and worries in a wave of hazy comfort. The album unfolds at a languorous pace, unrushed by external forces, unaware of them entirely.
“Shrine” opens with controlled minimal drumming, Mashikian’s ethereal vocals subtly moving above it. Her voice then flutters hushed over the haunting sparseness of “Ride 38”. Everything is filtered through an intense melancholic density (enhanced by song titles like “Tiffany’s Days Go By” and “Soft Purple Sky”). The airy bliss of “Sugar Daddy” sounds like someone awakening from the most pleasant of slumbers before it melts into the contemplative guitar chords of the aptly-named “Blue”. The focus is mainly on the whole atmosphere over vocals, tracks like the lengthy “Soft Purple Sky” and the closer “The World in Julia’s Eyes” imbued with a shimmering and pensive ambience.
Over 12,000kms away from San Francisco, I discovered this record during Melbourne’s sixth lockdown, a lockdown that marked us as having spent, I think, the most amount of days in lockdown since the COVID-19 pandemic. I kept returning to this seemingly simplistic but surprisingly tender record: it seemed to capture the wistful energy of being stuck indoors yet again, watching the rest of the world go by. I listened to the repetitive refrain of “Baby it’s alright” in the song of the same name while reading enviously about other countries celebrating ‘Freedom Day’. I listened to “Ride 38” while watching a Melbourne tram trundle by my house at rush hour, two lonely passengers on it with barely anywhere to go. I listened again and again, finding solace in the soothing lo-fi tranquility. Perhaps, once Melbourne finally emerges from lockdown, I won’t need to listen to it so much; it will, though, remain one of this year’s most unheralded but beautiful records.