My Favorite

***Indiepop’s acclaimed NY cult artists return with the first of three evening-hued EPs of imperious new wave and plastic soul—glassine surfaces as two way mirrors on loneliness, trauma and growing old in the ruins of dreams. With their first extended play release in nearly 20 years, My Favorite scavenge the digital debris of the 20th Century to fashion a pre-apocalyptic soundtrack for a millennium’s malaise, a “hard rain in a soft cell.” As sequencers and saxophones swirl, songwriter Michael Grace Jr. uses the tragic totems of James Dean, Princess Diana and Major Tom to explore love and loss—remaking/remodeling the dim corridors of the memory into bright passages forward. Barely out of their teens in 1994 when their debut single “Go Kid Go” was spun by John Peel, My Favorite was formed in the archetypal suburbia of Long Island—a floating sliver of dirt where every bad idea of post-war America was beta tested. Among the strip malls and subdivisions, five kids formed a half-band/half-art project during their freshman year at state college in Stony Brook. Raised on new wave via the legendary WLIR, while encircled by the local hardcore scene, the band tried to merge ‘80s high-concept pop with the DIY energy/politics of punk and riot grrrl.