Michael Ramos of Flowertown, April Magazine, and Hectorine creates beautifully eerie lo-fi pop under the moniker Tony Jay. For the unindoctrinated, the music emerges like a hazy memory where your favorite Sixties girl-group melody is perpetually slowed down.

Mt.St.Mtn. is set to release Tony Jay’s Hey There Flower LP on May 6. Tony Jay has shared “The Portal” from the record, which you can enjoy here.

Without a band to practice with, Tony Jay recorded the music alone, but recruited a slew of friends to remotely record backing vocals: Karina Gill (Cindy), Griffin Jones (Galore), Kati Mashikian (Mister Baby), Alexis Harper (Al Harper), and Hannah Lew (Cold Beat).

According to Ramos’ Flowertown bandmate, Karina Gill, “Hey There Flower delivers real melodies — both lacey with vocal harmonies and dusty with layered guitars — as fans have come to expect. This release also carries forward and elaborates on Tony Jay’s tradition of songs that express a kind of naked honesty about things we all know — love and loneliness and all that — while communicating at the same time a wry edge of skepticism, so that the songs are like coins spinning on edge before landing heads, tails, or lost under the couch.

“Tony Jay brings us into a nostalgia where we recognize moods from music of the past — Marc Boland definitely comes to mind, as well as Velvet Underground of the Nico era, and Tony Jay even covers Francoise Hardy on this collection — but the songs create a three dimensional space with what feels like a thousand layers so that instead of being thrown back in time, it’s like stepping into a little world with its own laws of nature, of which the listener gets just a few hints.”

See them live at:
Sun 5/8 – Gold Diggers, Los Angeles w/ Massage – Tickets
Mon 5/30 – The Ivy Room, Albany w/ Dark Tea, Sure Thing – Tickets
Thu 6/30 – The Knockout, San Francisco w/ R.E. Seraphin
Fri 7/1 – Gloom House, Portland w/ R.E. Seraphin, Nick Normal, Mo Troper
Sat 7/2 – The Substation, Seattle w/ R.E. Seraphin, Star Party
Sun 7/3 The Crypt, Olympia w/ R.E. Seraphin, Star Party
Fri 7/15 – Mucho Gusto Barbershop, Ventura w/ R.E. Seraphin, Sustains
Sat 7/16 – San Diego w/ R.E. Seraphin, Kan-Kan
Sun 7/17 Ham & Eggs Tavern, Los Angeles w/ Uni Boys