Artist


ijipic2 ijipic3 ijipic5

IMAGES: To download, click above.
Photo Credits:
ijipic1 – Charley Daugherty
ijipic2-3-4 – Nick Gomez-Hall

EMAIL THE PUBLICIST

SINGLES:
“Hard 2 Wait”
“Parking Lot Palms”

LINKS:
Twitter
Website
Facebook
BandCamp
Team Love Records

iji

Team Love Records

I was walking to the post office a few months ago when I saw 5 unkempt figures heading my way. As they got closer, I recognized these guys. They had played at our gallery last month, fogged the windows up good. Captivated the crowd with their impossibly balanced creation of modern and classic, a blend of Steely Dan cool and General Public pop, Squeezish hooks and Aztec Camera guitar flair. It was like a crash course in 60s pop, 70s avant-garde, 80s new wave and 90s popkid charm, with that unmistakable Puget Sound flavor. They were iji.

iji’s a band projecting their own brand of pop, nudging the genre into the comfort zone of a punk community, embracing a desire for rack-a-chack, ethereal and naivist sounds often unexplored by contemporaries.

Back on the sidewalk, I asked them what they were doing back in town. Apparently after the Team Love show the band had decided to go night swimming. Oblivious to the magical, secluded moonlit respite where the river bends wide or the lake meets the shallow cliff, iji wound up breaking into the local community pool, immediately getting arrested by the local community cops, and spending the night in the local community clink.  Now, rather than being out on tour in some distant state or country spreading their transcendental party music, they had routed themselves back up Hudson Valley way to appear in court and find that their punishment was, essentially, all the cash in their merch box. A bummer; quickly diverted by throwing together a few last minute shows and cruising on.

Shortly after this chance encounter Quarterbacks’ Dean Engle came by the shop and said he had heard the new iji album and wondered if I wanted to give it a listen.  I said something like, fuck yeah, and that was that.

Zach Burba, the founder of iji, is what you might call a lifer.  iji is always in a state of ‘to be continued,’ in the way that a journeyman is always and perpetually transitioning into the master.  They’ve put out numerous albums, singles, cassettes, and splits over the past 10 years; toured coast to coast playing DIY venues and houses where restrictions don’t apply.  This type of DIY pop is a lifestyle; it’s Kokopelli roaming the countryside sharing a song in exchange for a roof and a bowl of soup.

On Whatever Will Happen, iji has whipped a notebook full of travel poems into a full length American Experimental Highway Pop Opus. The band’s eleventh or twelfth full-length album is the first one recorded at Anacortes Washington’s “The Unknown” Music Studio with a solid line-up, the Seattle underground music scene’s best players. Jake Jones and Curran Foster from Sick Sad World, Will Murdoch from Pill Wonder, Evan Easthope from Neighbors, Erin Birgy of Mega Bog, plus a handful of jazz horn players and inspired back-up singers. “Whatever Will Happen” speeds past quiet beaches with soft-rock wind in the hair, through mountain passes with windows-down-power-pop, into seedy cities with free-jazz flavor and shameless disco grooves.

The next time iji come to town, I’m going to take them up to the ridge and show them a real swimming hole, something that’s locals-only and worthy of their greatness. And with that said, let’s wrap this up by stating that Team Love is proud to announce the release of Whatever Will Happen. Buy it at your favorite record store June 2nd.