Skip to content
Premieres

EXCLUSIVE: Person L’s Awesome First Single

person-l.jpg

At age 25, most musicians would feel lucky to have made it once. Kenneth Vasoli hopes to do it twice.

After three albums and loads of touring, his band — the successful pop-punk quintet the Starting Line — decided to go on hiatus in 2008 so its members could pursue new exploits. Vasoli was back home in suburban Philadelphia, writing songs in his basement. A four-minute burst of creativity and one guitar hook was all the spark he needed to put the Starting Line behind him and to forge ahead with his new band, Person L. The resulting song, “Untitled,” is available for download below.

“I go through this thing every few years where I feel like I need to stir the pot of my life and swirl everything around so I can’t recognize it any more,” Vasoli tells SPIN.com. “I was caught in one of those whirlwinds where I wasn’t in this long relationship anymore and was taking a break with the band I’d been with for eight years.”

The song is included on The Positives (out Nov. 17 via Academy Fight Song). Produced by longtime friend and Copeland lead singer Aaron Marsh, the album showcases a surprisingly diverse sound, something Vasoli calls “classic Person L”: garage rock and downtempo emo, touched with hints of R&B, rockabilly, and ambient influences, a mix akin to the creative, boundary-pushing sound of D.C. stalwarts like Jawbox and Fugazi.

“Untitled” is an exercise in minimalism for Vasoli, who repeats the same three verses — laced with simple themes of personal growth and triumph over pain — as guitar and drums propel the song forward. There is no chorus. Much like the rest of the album, Vasoli rides the groove and lets the song breathe.

As for the title, he decided to keep the song nameless as tribute to its simple nature.

“I didn’t want to go outside the box and have some weird thing that represents how I was feeling or something like that,” Vasoli says. “It felt right that it didn’t need a title. I wanted to say something that was very powerful and say it over and over again.”

Download the song below and let us know what you think in the comments section below!

LISTEN: Person L, “Untitled” (DOWNLOAD MP3)