“I don’t want to be myself / Around anybody else,” Matthew Lee Cothran mutters mournfully as he strums his guitar. Behind him and keyboardist Delaney Mills, his bandmate in North Carolina duo Elvis Depressedly, a bank of washing machines looks on bleakly. They’re playing their lo-fi, depressive indie pop in the low-budget, depressive setting of a Laundromat, and the combination works.
Far Out videos grew more elaborate over the course of 2017, but the basic concept remains the same: record a band in an unexpected spot that nonetheless complements its music perfectly. So far, Audiotree has recorded 14 acts playing one or two songs apiece. The session at the Museum of Surgical Science features Los Angeles’s Drab Majesty performing downbeat retro new wave against the institution’s gothic camp backdrop while wearing white robes and blue wraparound sunglasses. At Our Planet Automotive Services in Oak Park, English punks Basement blast away while mechanics lift up car hoods and check tires in the background. “We like when the venues can still continue their work,” Conway says. “We want it to be absurd that there’s a band playing there but the people aren’t acting as if anything different is going on in their workday.”
Conway and Khan have gotten a lot of positive feedback. YouTube commenters have been especially impressed that sound engineers R. Brok Mende and Rick Fritz managed to get studio-quality sound in a Laundromat, a service garage, and a barber shop.
