Shoegaze / emo / dream-pop band Bolinas have released a new song, titled “Ge”, which is also the intro track to their forthcoming debut full length album Heavy Easy Listening. After a drum loop that cycles once through, the track immediately launches the listener into a wall of roaring shoegaze guitars and washed out vocal melodies, a sound much in the same vein of DIIV’s recent dream pop gone heavy LP Deceiver or other bands that balance fuzz and distortion with catchy melodies such as Whirr and Gleemer. Heavy Easy Listening delivers on the promise of what that title implies – the atmospheric sonic textures and intensity of harder-edged shoegaze and emo styles married with sharp pop melodies and streamlined song structures that make it all go down smoothly as yacht rock.

“Ge” is named after the abbreviation for the element Germanium, which is a “hard-brittle metalloid” that is found in components of many fuzz pedals – including the one Bolinas frontman and multi-instrumentalist Chris Thomas used to record this song. Besides this fun fact, Chris chose to name this song after the element because “I really like reading “hard-brittle” because I know I can have a hard exterior, but I can also be brittle emotionally.” It’s a good fit for the lyrics of the song, which depict a forlorn lover who knows that they’ve screwed things up and are now powerless to fix it.

“Sometimes I lay awake recounting things I’ve said to people that I regret…” Chris says, describing his inspiration for the song. “I find myself talking in circles, getting frustrated, and then resorting to incoherent insults that confuse both parties. They’re definitely not something I mean, I struggle to understand why I even said them, and I always regret them. All of this contributes to the line ‘My knack for ruining the only good things I have going’. I’ve found myself in this situation so many times… It’s so hard to watch someone, you still love so deeply, move on and find happiness with someone else. Though you are truly happy for them, it’s still so hard to wish so dearly that you could have been ‘the one’. However, this song displays my willingness to change for the better and maybe that’s the takeaway.”

The release of “Ge” is accompanied by a music video shot by BK Peknik & Tracy Nelson.The video cuts together countless takes of Chris breaking out into a sprint, his outfits changing as he runs down the tree-lined suburban streets of his childhood. 

Photo Courtesy: Amanda Laferriere