Sarah Rose Janko (Dawn Riding) and Tony Molina (Ovens) pour up In The Storethe debut album of their collaboration as The Lost Daysten endearingly unspectacular indie/folk/pop DIY catchy tunes in just under thirteen minutes off the wrist.
The already provided a foretaste of this Lost Demos in 2021 – after which the duo immediately sat down and wrote more songs, entirely following the history of the two-piece band: “After meeting at a memorial for a mutual friend, Tony Molina and Sarah Rose Janko started spending nights into mornings playing guitar and singing their hearts out to an audience of empty wine bottles in the East Oakland warehouse where Sarah lived. (…) The days were marked in trips to Jackson’s Liquor store, the same spot Tony frequented while recording with his band Ovens a decade earlier, at a studio in the same neighborhood. The nights drifted by. The songs kept coming. They decided they wanted to record all they’d been pouring their hearts into and The Lost Days was born.“
With the help of Nick Bassett (on drums and keyboards), the duo sketched out almost a quarter of an hour of non-committal, simply knitted, often simply unraveling and snappy accessible little catchy tunes on an 8-track device with tambourine, 12 string guitars and sizzling amplifiers feels like a love letter to the 60s recorded in the DIY basement in the 90s, „Bill Fox, The Byrds, Dear Nora and Guided by Voices“ referencing completely anachronistically engaging.
Sometimes Molina also appears on the mic (in a leaning back and – holding back, strumming duet Half the Time; Long Before You Know or the one who ponders as troubled as he is relaxed Pass the Time), but mostly Janko revels in bittersweet nostalgia, just like in the swaying LoFi with the bulbous, knobbly bass Gonna Have to Tell You in cuddly longing and lovable simplicity, catchy and sympathetic. A For Today the speed wheel sways forward with only minimal attraction, meanwhile a Another Day shows a washed-out mood of optimism and What’s on Your Mind have a flair sounds like Kiss Then He Kissed Me staged modestly and romantically at the time before Mess You Made to dreamy Shapiros remind.
With the title song (piano and Hammond organ: Jasper Leach) Molina has even written a veritable epic (with a playing time of two and a half minutes), which in the solemn, swaying groove most clearly works out like a long-forgotten deep cut from old times wrapped up in an unspectacular memory, the Father John Misty and Jonathan Wilson would have polished it to a higher gloss.
If outro as an amiable consoling epilogue into the sunrise into the one that doesn’t waste a second In the Store fades away, apart from the aesthetics and attitude, not much has stuck with clear contours in the airy informality – but the prospect that the grown friendship of the two musicians will also last through the mourning in entertaining nights is quite tempting.
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