60 WATT KID: Take The Pain Out Of Your Chest

60 Watt Kid has crossed into a new dimension with the release of their latest album We Come From the Bright Side. The band has reinvented itself once again and fully embraced its unique "intergalactic pop" flavor with this conceptually cohesive full-length. The self-produced album was mixed by Thom Monahan (Devendra Banhart, Entrance Band, Vetiver and Lavender Diamond) to bring out its asymmetrical guitar riffs, swirling time signatures, and guru tunings that seem to break all rules of musical physics. Chock full of strange, dreamy, pop songs, otherworldly vocals, and layered sonic aberration, the album bends experimental pop on its side—demonstrating how malleable electronics and melodic instruments can be. From its wistful and percolating first song “2012,” the band manages to navigate a core aesthetic of its own design. As the album progresses, it morphs into the ebullient title track, through the explosive 2-minute psych-pop granger "Golden Travels," and into the apocalyptic “Pressure." Then, at the heart of the release is the tender epic, “Take the Pain Out Of Your Chest,” which is as beautiful and penetrating a track as any you’ll hear this year.

While re-locating to the warmer climates of L.A., after leaving behind San Francisco, founding members Kevin Litrow and Derek Thomas found a new dynamic drummer in young Dylan Wood. The 18-year-old wonder kid adds his unorthodox touch of high energy rhythm and tribal flourishes, completing the triangle of this exotic sounding three-piece. The band is presently gaining wide recognition, with rave reviews in Los Angeles from the L.A. Record (SoCal’s premiere source of underground inspiration), URB Magazine, and L.A. Weekly, and recently headlined DIY kingpin Sean Carnage’s four-year anniversary residency.

It’s truly rare to find a band that so effectively and simultaneously hugs the experimental as tightly as it hugs the hooks. Chronicling the recent passing of singer Kevin Litrow’s mother, We Come From The Bright Side takes the listener on a sonic emotional journey. As the album reaches its finale, we find ourselves filled with strange nostalgic longing to know what it is like on the Bright Side.

60 Watt Kid is also releasing a limited pressing split 7” with nationally praised DIY project FOOT VILLAGE (out on Absolutely Kosher September 22nd). The bands’ pulsating, high-energy tracks pair perfectly, and dutifully represent the creative quality coming out of the Los Angeles DIY scene. Foot Village is a thunderous drum-n-shout assembly from L.A. A recent Pitchfork review remarked, “The group hurls themselves so devoutly into every second that their urgency becomes contagious…Foot Village opts for rigorous precision. Nothing here is improvised, and it all has the feel of a ritual.”