1. Alex Brettin Mac Demarco Cheese
2. Alex Brettin Mac Demarco Photo
3. Alex Brettin Mac Demarco Latest
4. Alex Brettin Mac Demarco Albums

Based on reviews that are partly positive and partly puzzled, there’s a pretty solid case to be made that many don’t entirely get what Alex Brettin was after with Mild High Club’s Skiptracing.

Tag: Alex Brettin. October 26, 2017 October 26. Genre Genres George Harrison Goth Hall and Oats Hippies Homeage Hot Topic Indie Rock Jack Tatum Jim Croce Johnny Marr Life of Pause Mac DeMarco MCR Mike Joyce Mild High Club Morrissey Mosh Pits Music Musician Musicians My. Mac DeMarco Riverside Theater, Milwaukee, WI - Oct 1, 2019 Oct 01 2019 Mac DeMarco Palace Theatre, St. Paul, MN - Oct 2, 2019 Oct 02 2019 Last updated: 8 Sep 2020, 09:35 Etc/UTC.

The first half of the sophomore outing places the Los Angeles–based quintet in the same neo-slacker ballpark as acts like Mac DeMarco and Mikal Cronin, both of whom the band has shared stages with. Things kick off with the languid and lovely “Skiptracing”, where Brettin’s daydream vocals are set to summer-hazed guitars and cloud-soft drums. From there, “Homage” is ’70s AM radio infused with a quarter-ounce of Acapulco Gold and “Head Out” filters soft jazz through the same sensibilities that gave birth to Ween’s The Mollusk.

Alex Brettin Mac Demarco Cheese

Where things get really interesting, though, is on the back end of Skiptracing. Brettin serves notice that things are going to get weird halfway through the record when, in “Kokopelli”, he announces “Welcome to my twisted cabaret.” Given how many reviewers have argued the record eventually goes off the rails after an easily digestible start, it’s obvious that heads-up is getting missed.

“I really enjoyed every moment of the recording because I was pulling out all the stops,” Brettin says, on the line from a tour van wending its way through Vermont. “I was pushing myself, using stuff that I’d learned in school. I had the idea that it was going to polarize whoever listened to the record. It’s something that you can try and wrap your head around, or it’s something that’s really going to turn you off because it’s not your thing.

“Not to be elitist or anything,” he continues, “but the record can go over people’s heads if they’re not really paying attention. There are themes in there that are really meta, where I’m turning the whole process in on itself, almost having an inner dialogue with myself.”

Elaborating on that, Brettin suggests that the first half of Skiptracing finds him attempting to craft pop songs that are mini-tributes to different eras. As for the record’s home stretch, his training as a jazz musician definitely colours things, with “Whodunit” a freeform techno-colour blur of crazy drum violence, space-phaser synth bursts, and jungle-bombed percussion. “Ceiling Zero” unspools like the 5th Dimension taking a kick at the Taxi Driver soundtrack, while “Chasing My Tail” starts out as a country sleeper and ends up a peyote-drip dream.

“There’s everything from the bossa nova thing to Bach or whatever,” Brettin notes. “But things are set up the way that they are for a reason. Kokopelli is like the sage, the investigator. And once we get to ‘Kokopelli’, the sage sort of alerts the student that it’s okay to push things out, and that the record doesn’t have to be a start-to-finish banger.”

Alex Brettin Mac Demarco Photo

It’s worth noting that the first album Brettin ever latched on to was the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which he discovered as a small kid. Steely Dan was often in heavy rotation on his parents’ turntable, the singer also having a casual obsession with the likes of Brian Eno and Marvin Gaye. If something binds those acts together, it’s that they’re from a time when people actually made cohesive records with a start, middle, and end, as opposed to something to be chopped up into playlists on an iPod.

“When people don’t understand the back half of the record, it just means that they don’t have the patience nor the will to get through it,” Brettin argues. “I guess I don’t expect them to in this day of short attention spans and screen time and me time. The record is also for my own enjoyment. I’m interested in showing a sort of dynamic range rather than hitting the wall with things all the time. It’s okay to start in one place and end up somewhere completely different.”

Mild High Club plays the Biltmore Cabaret on Saturday (October 8).

Alex Brettin Mac Demarco Latest

Alex Brettin Mac Demarco Albums

If “Tripsters” had or wanted a soundtrack to their lives, Mild High Club’s new LP would be it.

For days spent on the beach, relaxing, playing, drinking, and possibly toking, or even summer nights cruising down an empty highway with all the windows rolled down, Mild High Club brings hazy multi-layered sounds with socially conscious and artfully conceptualized lyrics. The group’s name came from founder, Alexander Brettin’s friend who mentioned the term in the past and it stuck ever since. To Brettin, the group’s title encapsulates more than one interpretation.

“A society of like minded international players or a collective community of nerdy trippy kids. Tripsters, I guess you can call us,” Brettin said. “A brainchild is a collage of everything being consumed and has been consumed and involves similar minded people that inspire and enlighten.”

Before touring and working with artists like Ariel Pink and Mac DeMarco, Mild High Club’s origins began with founder Alexander Brettin, who started his music journey at a very young age guided by parents with exceptional taste in music. Brettin’s childhood soundtrack included everything from Sgt. Pepper, Steely Dan, and the soundtrack to The Big Chill to various late 1960s to 70s and Motown artists. Growing up with those impactful musical influences, he then went on to play the flute for his school band in 4th to 5th grade and later studied jazz at Columbia College Chicago. The lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist would later find that his music background and personal talents would allow him to gestate his signature sound including into his new record, Skiptracing.

“[The] last record hits on different concepts like modern day, internet age, angsty shit,” Brettin states. “And this one [Skiptracing] is more of a timeless investigation into past, present, and future explorations of what it means to be a songwriter.”

Skiptracing, which will be released on August 26th, combines Mild High Club’s trademark psychedelic dreamy rock and jazzy infusions with a post-modern film noir type of narrative set in Los Angeles. Intrigued? Alexander Brettin, founder of the collective, described wanting to create a record that was more detailed and conceptual than his 2015 release of Timeline which hit various modern social abstractions. He adds that even beyond the songwriting discovery aspect of the album, it exposes an important message of never losing the hunger for knowledge and deeper life and social lessons.

The album title, Skiptracing, was inspired by XTC’s Skylarking as well as his own experiences, ideologies, and knowledge on post-modern imitation art and French New Wave films. The term “skiptracing” means the act of locating a person’s whereabouts for whatever reason it pertains or relates to. Perfectly coinciding with his fantasy of being a Los Angeles based film noir detective or private eye, Skiptracing culminates into the now highly anticipated album.

“It’s meant to be listened to as one long song,” said Brettin about the new album. He wrote the first side of the record almost entirely chronologically and recorded it at a studio in Oakland, CA where he also finished writing the second side. He then mixed and tuned the upcoming album’s sound in Air BnBs in New York and added in “emailed-in drums from Chicago-a very continental recording.” Skiptracing reads or rather listens as a flowing anecdote about investigation and discovery. Brettin called the unique LP a “full on audio painting.”

“Hopefully we will be playing to a stoked crowd,” said Brettin in anticipation of playing in Los Angeles at The Echo on August 30th. “I know that the performances are going to be off the walls. It’s a crazy lineup that I put together with my manager.”

On top of a home based venue line up, Mild High Club will be touring nationally and internationally until December. He will be visiting not only countless cities across the States but also several cities in South America and Europe including Buenos Aires, Berlin, Paris, and Amsterdam. Although the musician does not have any particular expectations from the crowd itself besides hopefully them enjoying themselves and maybe getting a kick out of the name, Brettin reveals that the fans and audience members can expect new songs, longer jams, maybe a longer show even, him playing keyboard, and “more trinkets,” as he vaguely teases. Mild High Club’s tour dates and information are available through Stones Throw as well as the new LP, Skiptracing, which will also be purchasable through iTunes on August 26th.