The Relationship (members of Weezer, U.S. Bombs, & Bravery), Gringo Star

It's 2015 and rock n' roll is more alive than ever. That means it's time for the Relationship to step back into the spotlight with a new single, Oh Allen, scheduled for release on Burger Records, and an album's worth of new songs ready for their live set.

Founded in 2006 by guitarist/singer Brian Bell and lead guitarist Nate Shaw, the Relationship has called on some friends to fill out a new rhythm section: bassist Jon LaRue, an L.A. native and songwriting partner with Strokes co-founder Albert Hammond Jr. just returned from New York City, and New Jersey transplant Anthony Burulcich, the drummer for Morrissey and the Bravery, who was just settling back down from a long stretch of touring.

This re-energized Relationship matches Bell's preternatural pop precision with Shaw's famously incandescent lead guitar work. The result is a vital re-evolution of a sound born from bands like the Kinks, Cheap Trick, the Clash and more. In other words, it's a new take on absolutely classic rock 'n' roll.

It's no coincidence that one of Bell's earliest memories is holding his parents' hands on his way to see Elvis make his comeback in the '70s. "'Teddy Bear' was my favorite song," he says. "I was 4 years old—of course it would be!" Meanwhile, Shaw, the son of an artist, was probably the youngest kid in the early Orange County punk scene, learning about fundamental bands like the Dead Kennedys and Crime at age 9 and growing up to play guitar in the mythic Electric Cool Aide with Anton Newcombe, future founder of the Brian Jonestown Massacre.

When Shaw and Bell met, the connection was instant. Tennessee-bred Bell had just graduated from music school in Hollywood, wrangling a job in the campus cafeteria to ensure he had the means to stay and play music in L.A. Shaw had just started as a student at the same school, hoping to refine his raw, natural guitar talent with a dose of academic theory. They'd both grown up in their own D.I.Y. music scenes, and they both recognized something special in each other. Shaw was wearing a Chameleons UK shirt, Bell was wearing a Butthole Surfers shirt, and within 60 seconds of conversation, they'd practically started the band. "What time do you get off work?" Shaw asked. "We should jam."

That was the genesis of the Relationship, says Shaw—a name they picked because … well, everything is a relationship, isn't it? They found out fast that they had the best possible chemistry. "He's the salt, I'm the pepper!" laughs Shaw. "He's the McCartney and I'm the Lennon—that's the idea!'"

Or, to put it another way, Bell's got the scholarship and composition chops to pull off complex melodies and counterpoint harmonies, while Shaw is the homegrown guitar natural plugged right into the source of rock 'n' roll. Together, they can push each other to places they'd never have discovered alone, and that gives the Relationship songs that are somehow smart but simple— or effortless but complex, or modern but classic—all at the same time.

The first incarnation of the Relationship was a Bell-Shaw songwriting partnership, with the idea of seeding songs to other musicians. The idea was to treat rock 'n' roll like the art form it is—the highest art form ever, says Shaw—by applying passion and discipline in equal measure. But the plan changed when they started playing. "Once we got into it," laughs Bell, "we were like, 'I don't wanna give this song to anyone! Let's put a band together!'"

They wrote dozens of songs in between their other musical responsibilities, determined to keep the Relationship alive. By 2008, they'd mixed a self-titled debut album. But that's when the bottom dropped out of the music industry—"A real fall-of-Babylon situation," says Shaw, which sapped the momentum they'd built up when it was released on their own Golden State label in 2010.

Turns out they were just ahead of their time, however. Fast-forward four years into an unexpected rock n' roll resurrection—courtesy in large part to Burger Records, the outta-nowhere Orange County label that first conquered the world with cassettes. Suddenly, a new generation was deeply in love with the exact kind of music that first inspired Bell and Shaw. Here was the welcome return of the from-the-heart D.I.Y. rock n' roll music they'd always wanted to make. "This was exactly what I was talking about when I was 18," says Shaw.

Their Burger single is just a glimpse of what the Relationship have ready, combining LaRue and Burulcich's cosmopolitan New York City aesthetic with Bell and Shaw's original rock-as-high-art concept, and then soaking it in Southern California sunshine. A-side "Oh Allen" is a storming Big Star-meets-the-Beat rocker with a heart-tugging piano break—a bittersweet ode to the path not taken—while B-side "Young Temptations" is a gloriously hooky autobiography supercharged with a stadium-ready chorus and wry literary lyrics. As Bell says, "I want things to excite me / I got to break this routine!"

They've got a full new album almost ready, says Bell, cut to analog tape (of course) at L.A.'s storied studio the Village, where everyone from Weezer to the Beach Boys to Neil Young found a home to craft their hits. The theme, says Bell, is youth—not just the energy and irrepressible drive that come from being young and playing rock 'n' roll guitar, but the romance and melancholy and tragedy-turned-triumph that happen when a band decides to make the music their way, no matter what.

Getting the girl (or not getting the girl), writing the hook, singing something that really means something, and never giving up what you wanted that first day you decided to make a band—that's the story of the Relationship now, explains Bell, in song and spirit both. And you'll hear it on the first song on that Burger single. "We're tipping our hat to those dreamers out there," he says. "The ones that are still going for it."


On Gringo Star's latest, 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.

If you know a little about the Furgiueles' roots, it all makes sense. "Our grandad started out in radio in the '40s and '50s in Columbus, Ga.," Nick explains. "He was a huge promoter of R&B back when it was still super segregated, and he was playing black music and putting on shows with Little Stevie Wonder, James Brown, Sam Cooke & the Soul Stirrers, a lot of Gospel shows. So we grew up hearing all these stories, listening to all this music. Our grandfather was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame posthumously. And my grandma—all her photo albums are like Jackie Wilson shirtless backstage, hanging out."

Not to mention how Nick and Peter used to raid their parents' record collections, cutting their teeth on the likes of Buddy Holly, The Animals and The Kinks. "Our favorite music comes from the '50s," Peter says, "and that music influenced all the '60s bands we like."

With their family's R&B connections and their young obsession with early rock & roll, it wasn't long before the two brothers started making music themselves. When Nick was 15 and Peter just 11, they picked up bass and drums, respectively, formed a rhythm section and joined their first garage band. "We played together in the house and messed around on a little two-track," Nick says. "We've been writing songs together since before Peter was a teenager. We even played his 8th-grade dance."

A few years later, in 2001, with Peter still in high school, they started their first serious band, A-Fir-Ju-Well, and released their debut record on International Hits. During the second half of the decade, they formed Gringo Star and dropped a pair of lauded records—2008's All Y'all and 2011's Count Yer Lucky Stars—both engineered by James Salter (Black Rebel Motorcycle Club) and helmed by sought-after producer Ben Allen (Animal Collective, Gnarls Barkley, Deerhunter). Since then, the band has toured relentlessly across the U.S. and Europe building a diehard underground following while sharing bills with everyone from Cat power and Feist to The Black Angels and Weezer, and also touring with Wavves, Best Coast, And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead, The Toadies and fellow Atlantans The Black Lips.

While recording the new Gringo Star album—a psych-rock symphony to the cosmos, awash in shimmering compact organs, latin drumbeats and Status Quo-style space riffs—the band tried a new approach. Instead of enlisting a respected producer/engineer combo like Allen and Salter, they struck out for uncharted waters on their own. "It's been cool without the safety net of a producer," Peter says. "This record is more ourselves. There's no other filter besides our filter."

Recorded in the band's basement practice space at Peter's place in Atlanta, Floating Out to See is also the first time that Gringo Star has tried home recording. "With the last two records," Nick says, "we'd just go into the studio for a couple weeks and crank it out. This time, we threw down a chunk of cash on a super-nice microphone, and recorded everything in our leisure, which led to a lot more experimenting."

Since they only had the one good mic, the Furgiueles and Kaufmann began a one-instrument-at-a-time, trial-and-error layering process that began with the drums, played by Peter and part-time touring drummer Cam Gardner of Washed Out. Some of the songs they'd never even played before the day they recorded them. In such instances, they'd run down the new tune a few times until Gardner had his head around it, then he'd crank out the drum track by himself without anybody else playing—just from memory. "And that's how Peter did it, too," Nick says. "A blind drum track. I would stand in the room with them, and just kind of play the motions and signal the changes."

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.

Steve LaBate
Senior Contributing Writer
Paste, Georgia Music