Blonder lives and breathes elegantly yearning melodies and song structure. It's clear on his debut, $5, From the taut, bittersweet guitar chords and subtle synth leads running through "Lean" to the moody keyboard stabs of "What We Want," and tortured guitar scrawls tearing up "Upstate" to the Cars-like chug of "In and Out." Written in the throes of a relationship everyone else wanted to be perfect but just wasn't meant to be, each of the six songs is a "distinct world," says the singer-songwriter born Constantine Anastasakis. "It's about romance and sex, but I want people to see the whole thing."
Recorded to two-inch tape at Los Angeles' legendary Sound City Studios, $5 is a neon-hued collection of edgy confections that reflect Constantine's musical lodestars: Lorde and the 1975. The wry pathos behind the British act's lines like "I was thinking about killing myself, don't you mind?" infuses Blonder's acute awareness of the emotional subtleties of relationships: "You know just how I'm doing but you ask me anyway," he drawls to close out the album, noticing with a dry eye the faded leather jacket his former lover left behind.
You can hear the influence of collaborators including Constantine's good friend Aaron Maine of
Porches and soft-lit post-romantics Wet thrumming through the EP's six songs, but at their emotionally profound core they're Blonder through and through - a glossy yet gritty reflection of Constantine's inner landscape and musical sensibilities.
Growing up in Long Island, Blonder was first exposed to music through his older sister, starting with a visit to Jim Morrison's grave grave at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France. I memorized all the Doors' songs," he recalls. "I would sing them with my sister for her friends." Torn between his parents' careers - an artistically minded mother who worked at a blue chip art gallery and a florist father who firmly believed in stable careers - Constantine escaped the city whose artists he admired, sequestering himself in Vermont with a friend from college. After teaching himself to play the guitar a few years later - and Ableton by sampling French jazz and setting it to a beat - Blonder survived a bicycle accident only to endure "the worst pain of his life." Once again bound to a space smaller than his ambitions, he crafted hundreds of songs that would later shape the glowing coals of heartbreak he mined for $5.
"That's what characterizes music for me in a huge way," says Blonder, speaking as much to his universally emotive, gorgeous introduction to the world as to the New York scenes that influenced him. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and because it's art it can be more special than an ordinary day, or an ordinary moment."
TOUR DATES:
w/ Day Wave
6/1 Portland OR - Mississippi Studios
6/2 Seattle WA - Barboza
6/3 Vancouver BC - Biltmore
6/5 Calgary AB - High Fi Club
6/7 Minneapolis MN - 7th Street Entry
6/8 Chicago IL - Lincoln Hall
6/10 Toronto ON - Horseshoe Tavern
6/11 Montreal QC - Ritz
6/12 Boston MA - Sinclair
6/15 New York NY - Bowery Ballroom
6/16 Philadelphia PA - Foundry
6/17 Washington DC - Rock & Roll Hotel
6/19 Nashville TN - Exit/In
6/20 St Louis MO - Off Broadway
6/21 Kansas City MO - Riot Room
6/23 Denver CO - Larimer Lounge
6/24 Salt Lake City UT - Urban Lounge
6/27 San Diego CA - Casbah
6/28 Los Angeles CA - El Rey
6/29 Santa Barbara CA - SoHo Music Club
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