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The Hollywood Hills-born daughter of a horror filmmaker and sister of a cult comedian, Foxtails front-girl Laura Weinbach grew up in a household that embraced eccentricity. Her next-door neighbors were circus contortionists with emus and fang-toothed monkeys as pets and her childhood activities included snail hunting and spying on celebrity neighbors like Slash, Ice-T, and Larry from Perfect Strangers. Laura’s upbringing is present everywhere in Foxtails Brigade, from the lyrical imagery to the hand-drawn artwork and sophomoric Instagram cartoons.

The band’s live show is a clockwork of junkyard beats, warped orchestral sonics, and Laura’s trademark voice and classical guitar intricacies with an A-List ensemble featuring performing members of Bright Eyes, Van Dyke Parks, and John Kale.  The songs tackle subjects of substitute teaching in the Oakland and LA public school scenes, steak appreciation, and general unfairness awareness with a warped pop sensibility akin to influences like St. Vincent, Joanna Newsom, The Smiths, and Spoon.

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Emily Jane White

White’s new body of work recounts for us the terrain of her empathic inner world. The breadth and depth of her maturing voice are evident. Her layered vocals effect a sense of camaraderie, a space populated with voices, angelic perhaps, definitively ethereal. She studied classical singing while working on this album, which enabled her to broaden her vocal range. Throughout the recording process, she experimented extensively in the echo chamber at John Vanderslice’s Tiny Telephone studio in San Francisco. She used the room as her instrument, wherein she gave herself permission to roam free, exploring every capability and constraint. “I began to recognize a hidden concept within my work,” she recalls. “Most of my lead vocals were recorded in a vocal booth, and I chose to record the backing vocals in the echo chamber – but it was all me, and in that process I seemed to be fleshing out a concept of voices and pieces within a whole. I wanted to give a harmonizing quality to the fragmented pieces of self that result from trauma. I wanted to give them life and make them beautiful and real while still occupying an intimately distant and eerie space.” White weaves the many into one within the spaciousness of this record, an acoustic cathedral with myriad candles pouring light, a thousand flickering shadows, and glass­domed ceilings stretching upward to a star­lit night beyond. She invites the listener to sit within her chorus and experience melodic hope and cathartic resolve.

White’s polyvocal arrangements mirror her manifold focus, and are the defining stylistic element of the album. Multi­instrumentalist Shawn Alpay’s bass accompaniment firmly supports White’s steady guitar and piano playing by providing subtle rhythmic movement beneath her overlay. His cello sits closely below and curls around the vocals, lending definition to key dramatic moments, while Nick Ott’s visceral and tom­heavy drumming assertively mark the ebb and flow of each track. White: “I wanted to make an intimate album that had bombastic moments. The bass and drums helped define that. Cello is my instrument of choice when it comes to strings. It's the instrument most capable of sadness and melancholy. The cello is the veil, the fog, and at times the guiding light – the drums the heart and blood.” White’s vision was aided by mixing engineer Mark Willsher, whose background in classical music and film score engineering complemented her spatial and stylistic sensibilities.

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