Scarypoolparty's Los Angeles Has A Song For Every Mood

Scarypoolparty's Los Angeles Has A Song For Every Mood




Alejandro Aranda spent a season on American Idol, nevertheless he's habitually been a being of his own creation. He performed technically dazzling original compositions as piece of a showcase that tends to favor belting covers. He greeted judges Katy Perry, Luke Bryan, and Lionel Richie with a understated "What's up, homies?" throughout his audition. And since 2019, whenever he released his stark, genre-agnostic debut Exit Form, Aranda has used his major-label platform to wedge the weird, hard-edged sounds that fuel him into a mainstream pop career. No easy feat, however Aranda is such a gifted stylistic polymath that it magnetizes him; his songs mixture industrial darkgaze, soulful trip-hop, mathy heaviness, and dizzying piano rhapsodies into a recording and performing alias he calls Scarypoolparty.


The staggering result, seemingly impossible in the streaming age, is something wholly his own, a path not beholden to trends or dictated by focus-grouped nostalgia. It's the cold, metallic Queen of the Damned soundtrack filtered via warm lights of his residence, Los Angeles, and of Aranda's own lived experience. His new EP, titled right following the city itself, captures what it's given him: the emotion, the part-time jobs, the long talks, the longer drives, and every moment in quarantine.


"A lot of those songs were certainly lockdown songs," Aranda tells MTV News. "I think a majority of these were self-reflection on where the city is, where I live, and day-to-day life — day-to-day going out and attempting to do things, and can't, and also you have got to stay indoors and ensure everything is OK in that area."


For last year's Doom Hologram, Aranda recorded vocals directly into his MacBook, unknowingly prefacing the Zoom-call collaborations he'd rely on finalizing this new EP. The brevity of Los Angeles as a four-song EP likewise permits Aranda to tighten up his own arrangements, making it his most available collection however. As a substitute opposed to downbeat, seven-minute meditations or hourlong piano improvisations, he leans into pop structures even as he rushes toward the horizon fusing trap, classical piano, and cocktail bravado. He even reined in some of his more experimental tendencies: "Originally, I had three songs on the EP and then I had this metal song that I was going to throw in there, and I was just like, you know what? I want it to prepare sense."


The result is Los Angeles in its several shades, cohesive however sprawling like its namesake. Below, Aranda breaks down the EP track by track and mood by mood.





  • "Universe" ft. Nothing, Nowhere



    Listen to it once you're in the mood for: "drop-top Mustang, just blasting the music and having fun."


    Key lyric: "Feeling like a sad boy trapped in disguise / Highest in the Zoom call, that's no surprise"


    Scarypoolparty says: "I have so several gigabytes full of recorded piano. Any place that I find a piano, if I might record it, I'll do that. I'll play probably a hour or two of just stuff and I'll record it and then I'll visualize what fits into a beat. And some days, I never get anything for weeks on end. I think it came out pretty cool because it was just out of nowhere, just a spur of inspiration.


    "With Nothing, Nowhere, he's astonishing, man. I feel like his contribution to the song elevated it, as the stuff that I'm saying in the verse and the chorus is out there, in terms of it's not taking itself also seriously. I feel like it's an awesome thing that you could just fully trust that he's going to send back something that's dope. He just killed it."






  • "Overdone"



    Listen to it once you're in the mood for: "a love song of someone that's learning and someone that's going through every emotion that you could think of."


    Key lyric: "Your love, your love, your love is really overdone / It's overdone"


    Scarypoolparty says: "This song is actually a pretty old rendition of this R&B album I was making. And thus I had this idea and I just did it into my phone and EQ'd it a bunch and I just put it in there, doing some flute. It's just a really random song, although the song is dope. That's the way I work. I'm really random. I make a lot of songs that sound like they belong in Looney Tunes or songs that [make] you wish to go to a jazz club. It really matters, also, what I'm watching, because I've Been watching a lot of Curb Your Enthusiasm and I feel like Larry David is my spirit animal. And I was like, man, let me just throw in some flute on this track.


    "The lyrics are very much like somebody that's overdoing whichever they feel is right, and the other person just attempting to tell them, 'It's over, it's done.' I don't have also several personalized experiences like this, however I've had people and then some things that I've seen that, in terms of approaching friendships, relationships, along with a lot of those things — some days I think, especially for myself, seeing how people can overstep their boundaries in a way, and so they don't know why."






  • "Paradise"



    Listen to it any time as soon as you wish someone would say: "Dude, we're all going through this, man. We're all here for each other, and this is a heavy topic, and let's talk about it."


    Key lyric: "Do you learn that I'm really fuckin' broke? / I can never find you / Nevertheless you never said that you had a problem with your medication"


    Scarypoolparty says: "I feel like the heaviness of drug abuse and opioid abuse is huge. It's huge. And personally going through things with my member friends or relatives or whoever it is, it's routinely this thing of — people don't hope to approach it and people don't desire to talk about these things and understand that it's OK to talk about these things. The word 'paradise' is just — for instance, we're in Los Angeles in California and we're in a cute state, nevertheless in case you don't approach these things, it might be the worst thing for you. In case you approach it in a way of just understanding that we're all human, things will get better and things will become a paradise.


    "My thing is drums. I love drums. Drums are always the initial thing that I write to. Even with acoustic songs and piano songs, drums have to be there. With this song, I had this bassline and then legit, I am not even lying, I was listening to 311, and I was listening to 'Down.' That song is dope. And thus I was like, man, it could be really cool to prepare a song that's in this vibe. It feels like SoCal in a way, just like California, driving down the coast. And thus I wanted to really put that in there, and I was like, well, let me make the rhythm section really bump."






  • "Room Full of Cards"



    Listen to it any time you're in the mood for: "that darkness-to-light feel."


    Key lyric: "Some might mention that it's a mistake / To love someone who doesn't love you / Although I'm hurting here indoors this room"


    Scarypoolparty says: "I was listening to Nick Cave Then the Birthday Party and then I began watching some David Lynch films and I was like, man, it could be really cool to create a lounge jazz track that has to do with someone in the beginning stages the track with some really deep vocals. And that's basically the idea of it.


    "I feel like there's a darkness to it. The initial verse that I'm singing is, 'My love is damaged in design.' It's almost like someone that grew up really hard in the heart, been through some things, and doesn't know how to show expression. And then by the chorus, you hit this thing where it's like, 'Hold me in your arms.' I really wanted the music to really just breathe."













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