MUSIC DUO ROCK SIMPLIFIED

By matt king

Very few local bands survive 10 years. People can be driven apart or lose interest; life and families can get in the way; a lack of local-music support can take a toll.

Town Troubles, however, has been a musical powerhouse in the Coachella Valley since 2010. The members have experimented with their sound and style through the release of a few EPs, and while the band grew to four members in the mid ’10s, Town Troubles is—currently and always at its core—the duo of Bolin Jue on vocals/guitar and Bryan Garcia on drums.

Now 13 years into the band’s career, Town Troubles is releasing its fourth EP, Love Overrides Beauty. It’s a six-track sonic mix of riffs, experimentation and danceable jams with an electronic, overdriven tinge. Standouts include “Addicted,” which features heavy driving guitar matched with soft vocals, reminiscent of Royal Blood; and “Blemishes,” a creepy yet headbanging track that transforms into a pop-ballad chorus. Production-wise, it’s some of the band’s best work to date—but for now, the EP will only be available on vinyl.

During a recent Zoom interview with Jue, he explained why nine years have passed since the band’s last EP.

“We didn’t release anything, because I felt like it was difficult to find people to record us who weren’t us,” said Jue. “If you have a DIY setup, what you put out can sometimes not sound as high quality or as touched up as it can sound if you have someone else do it. For a while, we couldn’t really find anyone that we were happy with.”

The batch of songs on Love Overrides Beauty were composed as part of their journey to find the perfect recording situation—and a fulllength album is not too far behind, Jue said.

“Before we recorded the album, we were trying to figure out the best way of doing this: Is it better to record it ourselves and have someone else mix it? Is it better to have someone else record us and mix it?” Jue said. “Before we decided how we wanted to record the album, we decided to record a ‘guinea pig’ family of songs to just test out that process. I wrote these six songs as a way of figuring out how to record the album; we actually have a whole album of unrecorded songs.”

A match was made when Town Troubles found Luciano Avalos.

“We used actual compressors and actual EQs that weren’t just added and edited later or whatever,” Jue said. “We recorded it really quickly; I think it took 11 hours to do everything. The drums were in one day; all the guitars were in one day; all the vocals were in one day.”

Both the EP and recent live performances have showcased the power of this duo, thanks to the emphatic sound of Jue’s guitar run through effects pedals, and Garcia’s beastly beats.

“I always was a fan of us being a two piece, even when we weren’t,” Jue said. “It wasn’t always entirely up to me when we weren’t. I’m still down with us playing as a two piece, and playing with other musicians, too. It doesn’t really have to be one way or another. … I frequently remember moments when I was looking at a roomful of musicians I was playing with and thinking to myself, ‘I wonder how this would sound if it was just us two.’ I also didn’t always have my live sound down. That’s still something that I’m battling with, but back then, I was a lot more broke, and I was younger, and not really understanding what I was doing. I had a lack of a musical identity, in terms of gear, so I think I was more OK with the idea of having other people fill in the lack of sound that we were producing with just us two, especially if I was just playing through a guitar amp and nothing else.”

While Jue said Town Troubles has always valued simplicity, Love Overrides Beauty features unique vocal phrases and lines, including a number of moments when Jue treats his lyrics like call-and-response. This new style came directly from Jue’s experience with Native American poets, he said.

“I read a lot of Native American poetry in grad school, and I met a few at some readings that I had gone to,” Jue said. “Something that I admired about that style was, once again, the simplicity of some of the chant-y call-andresponse lines that you find in that stuff. It was something that I started mimicking, and it worked well for certain things. I don’t have a 23andMe kit, but I’m sure I’ve got some of that in me, so it just made sense to sort of emulate that style of poetry.”

A thread throughout the EP is social-media obsession; song titles include “Influencers” and “Addicted.” There are also lyrical references to cat videos and reposting. Jue explained that the inspiration for some lyrics came from The Brain That Changes Itself, a book on the concept of “neuroplasticity.”

“(The brain) is very plastic in terms of what people find attractive, what people can be addicted to, our habits, our beliefs,” Jue said. “There’s a woman who has a disorder—if I spin you around, and I stop spinning, the feeling remains that things are still sort of moving. This woman has that all the time, and she couldn’t stop it. She was seeking different professional help and opinions, and she found someone who basically helped her through it. Part of getting through that was just therapy through training your brain and recalibrating it. The same can be said for addictions and outside entities that have the power to control that plasticity of our brains. It’s just a really fascinating concept to me.”

Jue explained how controlling our brain can help us change for better—or, in the case of products to which many are addicted, for the worse. The songs on Love Overrides Beauty refer to looking inward.

“I feel like if you just looked at things a little bit more critically, perhaps our lives would improve,” he said. “That’s what all of these songs have in common—we’re all sort of speaking to that faceless thing that I feel like a lot of us are battling.”

The vinyl-only EP comes 10 years after Jue told the Independent that the band was working on a limited-print vinyl release.

“I have a thing for listening to music on vinyl,” Jue said. “I know it’s a super-hipster and nerdy to do now, but for me, it’s kind of like going to the theater. It’s this magical thing, and it really makes me appreciate music. … I think listening to music on vinyl helped me realize that this is why people get paid a lot of money to do this. Listening to music on vinyl, you realize how magical it is, and it sort of puts it in your face. I thought, ‘Well, I want to do that.’”

Love Overrides Beauty

Dale’s Records in Palm Desert, Finders Keepers Records in La Quinta, and at the release shows. “We’ll be playing the EP in its entirety, and then after that, whoever wants it can listen to it online,” he said. “The vinyl is cool because it’s a physical thing. There are lyrics inside of them, and we’ll probably put some stickers, and you get the artwork. I know there are a few people out there who like that stuff still. I just would like to pass those out first, and then whoever wants it digitally, that’s free. I don’t really expect to make money off of any of this.”

Town Troubles will perform alongside Koka, Desert Crows and Las Tias at 7 p.m., Saturday, July 8, at Second Saturdays, 82868 Miles Ave., in Indio. The event is free. The band will also perform with Camala on Friday, July 28, at Club 5 Bar, 82971 Bliss Ave., in Indio. The event is free. For more information, visit instagram.com/ towntroubles.