Members of beloved emo-leaning groups Christie Front Drive, Mineral, Boys Life have reassembled in the new band Suburban Eyes and have released their first song together, “Uncomplicated Lives.”
The project features Eric Richter (Christie Front Drive, Antarctica), Jeremy Gomez (Mineral, The Gloria Record) and John Anderson (Boys Life), who knew each other through the underground music scene of the ’90s and 2000s but never collaborated together until 2020.
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“Uncomplicated Lives” is strident and jangly — an evolution of the noisier, electric guitar-driven sound of its members’ past bands. The song features backing vocals and piano from Mineral’s Chris Simpson and guitar and organ from Christie Front Drive’s Kerry McDonald. Veteran producer Peter Katis (The National, Interpol) contributed synthesizer and also mixed the track.
“There was an outdoor flea market on Broadway in downtown Manhattan that I would frequent in the late 90’s,” Richter recalls. “One weekend I bought a cheap, sort of beat-up, acoustic guitar for $12. It didn’t have the greatest tone, but a few open chords sounded great on it. In the summer of 2008, while I was living in Greenpoint, I wrote a handful of songs on it and recorded them on a little handheld digital recorder. ‘Uncomplicated Lives’ was the only song that survived those writing sessions. I ended up demoing it at home a few years later and it just sat in a folder on my computer for 13 years. When we started this project, I shared a bunch of demos that I recorded over the years and ‘Uncomplicated Lives’ seemed to stick, and I’m really happy that this song is seeing the light of day.”
Further music is expected from Suburban Eyes in the weeks to come.
