Drug Cabin comprised of onetime Ambulance LTD frontman Marcus Congleton and former Pretty Girls Make Graves guitarist Nathan Thelen, released their debut album,
Yard Work, on February 24 and have already announced its follow-up,
Wiggle Room. The album will be available on CD, cassette tape, and digital formats on
April 7 via 401K Music. The prolific due released “Handsome” from
Wiggle Room which premiered this week on
Pure Volume. Drug Cabin’s Nathan Thelen told
Pure Volume, “We recorded ‘Handsome’ at our pal Cundo’s studio in MacArthur Park during the
Wiggle Room sessions. It was only a half-finished idea up till the morning of the session, so I took a walk around the lake there and came up with the rest by the time we began. Perhaps where all the water reference sprang from. Eugene added the Motown intro idea and we really tried to hit some Bee Gees notes in the chorus, and it all came together nice and easy.” “Handsome” is also available to post and share via
SoundCloud.Last week, Impose Magazine premiered the new video for “Sapphire” from Drug Cabin’s debut album Yard Work which is available now. Impose Magazine described the video by saying, “Nathan Thelen along with visual artist Gordy Knouse assemble an animated collage of vintage pictures and classic clip-art cut-outs pasted together in mellow, musical harmony…The lost weekend roll of lazy guitars are portrayed in a performance by ancient Greco-Roman statues turned gauchos, that attest to the timeless testament of that forever faded 70s sepia saturated style of stoned singer-songwriter gold. The modern and the archaic get mixed together in a pastiches of a painted and drawn backgrounds, colors, shapes, and more, as the song trucks on down the line in an ode to a sapphire sun.” “Sapphire” is available to post and share via YouTube.
In 2009, while traveling through Central America and Mexico, guitarist / singer songwriter, Nathan Thelen wrote what would be the first ever Drug Cabin song even before those two random words would be combined in this mind. The song was “On The Mountain” written in a cabin situated on a mountain in Chiapas Mexico. The name Drug Cabin materialized in Thelen’s brain in Chiapas too and it became the name of his largely solo LA based project culminating in a 2012 EP full of intimate down to earth alt folk songs that would often times deceptively blow up into dreamy ethereal indie pop.
As random chance seemed to inspire Thelen’s project, another chance happening occurred the day before Drug Cabin’s first show. While Thelan jammed with then bassist Mikey, Marcus Congleton (Mikey’s roommate) joined in playing guitar. The musical pieces fit and Marcus became a part of Drug Cabin almost instantly, naturally. In Thelen’s mind, Drug Cabin was never built to last. It had always been intended to be side project but when Marcus entered the creative picture the faint spark once captured in Chiapas, Mexico burned into a full-fledged musical creation. Singer songwriters became writing partners.
Both Thelen and Congleton were, after all, kindred spirits having left their mark on the indie landscape in the early to mid 2000’s. While Thelen was an integral part of the kinetic proggy alternative rock outfit Pretty Girls Make Graves based out of Seattle, Washington and the post punk Moonrats in Los Angeles, 2800 miles away Congleton, as part of Ambulance LTD, fused strains of shoegaze and dream pop into emotionally wrought songs. Whether crushed under the weight of bankrupt record labels (morally or otherwise) or falling prey to the normal “rock band” expiration date, those musical incarnations ended giving Nathan and Marcus the chance to find each other in the creative sun soaked wash of Los Angeles.
With the talented support of Brandon “Eugene” Owens on bass, Sheridan Reily on drums, and Frankie Palmer on pedal steel, Yard Work and Wiggle Room were recorded to analog 8-track at Gaucho Electronics in Downtown Los Angeles. Engineered by F. Bermudez , produced and mixed by Nick DeWitt (Pretty Girls Make Graves, Liars), together both records contain a vast collection of harmonious sweeping deep groove folk-ish indie pop with deceptively addictive hooks. The shape shifting tone of the compositions can feel very much like 70’s garden rock imagined by Brian Wilson as it feels so down to earth yet so dreamy.
