Suburban Pets are a duo from Chile, who are about to release their debut album, Life in a Citycar, on the ever-reliable French label Hidden Bay Records. The mini album was made by Suburban Pets in different apartments in Chile and New Zealand between 2016 and 2018, and is a collection of ten lo-fi pop songs that owe equal debts to the downbeat romanticism of 80s pop and the slightly skewed intimacy of Bandcamp-era bedroom recordings.
From the echoey and gentle melancholy opening of ‘Ride On’, to the bummed out surfy vibes of ‘I Refuse to Say Goodbye’, Suburban Pets have crafted an album of considerable diversity, one that’s simultaneously strange, sad and stirring. There’s a fine balance between nostalgic emotion and playful invention, the former keeping the latter in check and vice versa, meaning that the ultimate tone of the record is difficult to pinpoint. Rather, the spirit of Suburban Pets is fun and emotion intertwined, a twist that comes to look a lot like life itself.
Today we unveil Life in a Citycar in its entirety a few days ahead of release. Hit play below to check it out. Standouts include ‘Yellow’, with its devotional organ-style synths and yelled backing vocals, an understated epic conjured from a quiet apartment floor, and the aching, glittering slo-mo synth pop of ‘Dracula’s Lament’, the lyrics stretched and pulled into entracing shapes, like a low-lit hall of mirrors. Also, be sure to to spend some time with the gentle strum of ‘Candy’, which slowly becomes wrapped up with cooing vocals and dreamy guitar lines, forming a gauzy shimmer of song, a moment of peace and respite, like a thin morning mist soon to be burned off by summer sun.
