Last year, pre-COVID-19, we felt excited of hosting the exclusive premiere of The Figurants‘ ‘Casual Complaining‘. We share the equal excitement today, despite the pandemic, since those indie dudes, have trusted Last Day Deaf, once more for their upcoming standalone single ‘Phantom Twin‘, which will officially be out on August 17th.

The Figurants don’t need more than 160 seconds to resurrect the ‘slacker culture’ the Godfathers of modern indie, Pavement, imparted to them. Just cannot get enough of the guitars’ overdriven/distorted tone. Obsession!

And God created indie… On repeat!

Press Notes:

“Phantom Twin” is about an impossible bond between two identical twin sisters born continents apart to different sets of parents.  They have that thing that twins have where they can feel each other’s emotions and they unknowingly share thoughts that make them both act erratically at times.  Both feel vaguely incomplete being so far from one another, as one could imagine, and the story doesn’t end well.  

This song, like most of The Figurants’ work is part of a much larger narrative that I’ve been working on for many years.  

About the band:

Erik and I used to play in a band together just out of high school called “Lighto”.  We went our separate ways when I moved from Lancaster, PA to Pittsburgh to experience “city life”.  Erik went on to enjoy a successful stint as a solo artist as well as a great run as a stand-up comic.  I continued to make lofi DIY music (playing all the instruments) under the band name “Red Kitchen” which released one album, “The Second Person” which is somehow still available on Spotify. 

20 years later, I was working on the follow-up to the Red Kitchen album when I read an interview with Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse about how he records all of his songs before adding the drums at the very end when he receives them piece mail from his drummer over the internet.  I was inspired by this approach to reach out to my old buddy Erik. 

Now, I had spent years learning how to play the drums myself (like a seasoned introvert) but never really got “it”, I could keep a beat (largely) but my drums never sounded “good”.   Erik Sahd has not been one my all-time favorite humans, but also my favorite drummer.  He’s insane yet incredibly tasteful AND has unfettered access to a studio.   I asked him if he wanted to put this Sparklehorse model to the test and he was in.

We went to work late in 2017 and cranked out about 30 songs in 6 months or so that made up our debut album “Relative Distance”.  Since that album came out, we’ve released 3 more albums:  “What Your Teeth Do”, “Vicarious Victims” and most recently “Indoor Words”

We are currently working on our next album with a TBD release date and are working on a remix EP.