Combining the soaring melodies of sixties garage-pop with the bittersweet jangle of the late 1980’s DIY indie explosion, New Jersey based Lightheaded have been riding a tide of excitement and anticipation ever since news of their debut release for the revered Slumberland Records started circulating. Their EP Good Good Great! arrives 13th October and ahead of its release Cynthia and Stephen from the band very kindly agreed to talk to heavymetalkids.uk:

Having been engrossed in the San Francisco underground now for a good few years, it’s been cool finding and falling for an East Coast group for once! Can you tell me a little about New Jersey, and the Indie scene over there?

The first two places that come to mind for New Jersey music are Asbury Park and New Brunswick. We’ve both been playing in the Asbury Park area since around 2010. There’s not really any bands that are stylistically playing the same type of jangly, twee music or like baroque girl group stuff are we are, but there’s a lot of bands doing really cool guitar based rock and pop stuff that we are huge fans of. 

This has helped us out a lot with filling in band members, it’s how we found Sara, who is our third core member. She had a cool dream pop project called Teen Idle and we booked her at the house venue that we lived at on the Jersey Shore (the Pop Club) with 2nd Grade as her first show. We talked a little bit afterwards and sorta was able to add her to the mix not too long after her first gig.

I’m interested in the lightheaded origin story as it seems to have had a few twists and turns along the way. How did you guys come together initially, and how did you arrive at the line up as it is now?

We actually played a show in Asbury around 2010 or so, then formally met in 2016 outside of a basement show. in New Brunswick. We immediately started writing songs like madmen over that period of time, but stopped the project for about a year and a half. Then, sort of right before the pandemic, we found our way into each other’s lives to launch our songwriting partnership again. We already mentioned Sara, but we’ve had a bunch of drummers over the past few years from a ton of great New Jersey bands like Nylon, the Ergs!, and Ogbert the Nerd, but are rocking with the bassist of one of our all time favorite NJ bands, Starcleaner Reunion, as our drummer. Adam rules!

Good Good Great! is officially your first release. I have however seen demo tapes come and go, and have even heard rumours of full albums being briefly made available in the past. You guys must have a fair amount of material ready to go??!

Yeah, it’s been a little weird for us with material, to be honest! We had all those initial songs saved up which we wrote from the period that we met over half a decade ago, and Cynthia really wanted to get that batch out before we began anything else. So, we have a full debut album about to be pressed on vinyl, the EP coming out on cassette now, planning a single release after, and the second album already written. Lol we are busy boys and girls! But again, we have been a band for so long, and when you write the way that we do, filling in the gaps for each other, it feels really easy to write songs that we like.

The EP is coming out via the wonderful Slumberland Records, which seems like a perfect fit for you guys. How did this connection come about, and how does it feel seeing your work released on such an esteemed independent label?

IT’S THE BEST! It feels like everything that we like musically, that came out since Slumberland started in 1989… has released music on Slumberland! The Aislers Set is such a huge inspiration for us, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart too, even stuff like Stereolab… I mean, they got the Clientele on a 7 inch, for god’s sake! Even the lesser talked about bands like Pants Yell or Nord Express are some of our most listened to and favorite records.

The connection came about pretty much all thanks to one wonderful individual. Stephen was really obsessing over The Umbrellas at the end of last summer and sort of reached out to Morgan (Morgan Stanley, The Umbrellas guitarist/vocalist) to let her know about it. She was wonderfully kind and receptive to his fanboying, and talked about playing a show together one day, which Stephen took as an open invitation to make happen ASAP. We flew over to California to play some shows over Thanksgiving and we were REALLY hoping Mike (Mike Schulman, Slumberland Records) would be there to check us out, but… he wasn’t lol. Regardless, he must have heard something from someone, and we think it was good things from Morgan.

Finally, what’s next for lightheaded? What are your hopes and ambitions for the EP and beyond?

One of the things we are really inspired by is bands like the Screaming Females, who just played their final state in the United States, Alaska. We really want to use the band as a way to take us places around the world and meet new people. We’re really hoping to tour Europe over the summer. We are going to go back to California to see our friends and the people we met the first time we visited that meant so much to us, and inspired a whole bunch of new songs, and even just our outlook when we got back.

We want to keep on writing songs that we really love, together, and to see the world with the bands we love, like what happened with The Umbrellas. We want to connect with more people through our music and build experiences with people we look up to and admire.

With my ears still ringing from some fine new music recommendations and a new found understanding of the roots of one of the most exciting new bands I have discovered this year, I’m off to immerse myself in the after-hours jangle of Mercury Girl once more, and wait patiently for Good Good Great! to land. Be sure to check that out here.

With thanks to Cynthia Rittenbach and Stephen Stec.