Acclaimed indie rockers Gringo Star are touring in support of new release, Floating Out to See, and are playing MOTR Pub tonight!
On Gringo Star’s latest release, liquid melodies cascade through air like a waterfall in zero gravity, brothers Nicholas and Peter Furgiuele and cohort Chris Kaufmann out-of-body—floating apparitions of a band glancing down as their corporeal manifestations radiate celestial blues and psychedelic garage bangers, gritty R&B shuffles and spaghetti-Western weirdness. Floating Out to See could—and should—be the soundtrack to Tarantino’s first sci-fi film.
As the album’s title suggests, Gringo Star are insouciant explorers, tossing the paddles overboard and drifting on the currents of their lackadaisical curiosity across a rippling sonic ocean, out to the far edges of rock & roll. Shot pulsing from a vintage Leslie speaker, their guitars, keys and vocals pirouette across the astral plane, the psychoactive ingredients of their echo-slathered, doo-wop-indebted indie gems. Santo & Johnny, The Stooges, Ritchie Valens, Marc Bolan, Percy Faith, Sam Cooke, the men working on the chain gang—uh! ah!—they’re all here, their electric ghosts reaching across time, tapping Gringo Star on the shoulder like the crossroads devil to Robert Johnson, bestowing secrets, passing torches.
Floating Out to See plays like a long-forgotten polaroid excavated from the bottom of some mysterious thrift-shop bin, scanned into a computer, emailed to your smartphone and Instagrammed with a nice washed-out filter—a shimmering post-War daydream plucked from the mid-20th century and dropped wide-eyed into the hyperlinked now. No other group today so effortlessly distills the essence of nascent rock & roll into something so entirely modern yet authentically, spiritually tethered to the past.
In the wake of some significant personnel shifts (most notably the departure of third writing member Pete DeLorenzo), Floating Out to See is also the first Gringo Star record to feature the Furgiuele brothers as the band’s sole lead vocalists/songwriters. “We always loved Pete D’s songs and we loved playing with him,” Nick says, “but I feel like there’s more continuity now than ever before. Despite going through three drummers in the past year, Me, Peter & Chris are feeling super tight.”
It’s no mistake that the final track on the new Gringo Star album is called “The Start.” Because this ending marks the beginning of a new era for the band. They’ve paid their dues over the last decade, weathering multiple lineup shifts and the often-brutal gauntlet of the road on two continents separated by thousands of miles of ocean, building their following the old-fashioned way; they’ve studied in the studio with the masters, and they’ve set out on their own intrepid sonic odyssey, returning with the blinking-light palette of esoteric sounds and unforgettable hooks that comprise their infectious new record, Floating Out to See. And now, they’re riding this slowly cresting wave toward what looks a whole lot like a breakthrough.
"Good stuff, catchy and hyper-confident." - Pitchfork
"Addictive." - KEXP
Catch Gringo Star at MOTR Pub tonight! 10P show and it's FREE!
