Winnetka Bowling League Release Debut Album 'Sha La La;' Headline Tour Kicks Off in June

Los Angeles band Winnetka Bowling League have released their debut album Sha La La via Local Weather/ MDDN Records. The album is a document of frontman Matthew Koma rediscovering what he loves about music; a back-to-basics and grounded release that finds him taking risks while being in conversation with his younger self. 

Speaking of the album Koma shares, “Sha La La was an album recorded in Studio City, an arm's throw from Jinky's which serves very subpar breakfast offerings. It's very much a snapshot of my 20's... trying to make sense of the trip, indulging in the what ifs and allowing some of that unresolved discomfort to develop into ‘it didn't matter’. I wouldn't say I live in the past or even think about it much but what came out in this collection really is a revisiting of rehearsed truths. We make our own stories up along the way and I'm not sure this record is any more accurate than the perceived experience while it was happening, but the feeling I get listening to it is how I'd like to remember growing up...and I hope some of the songs, or the whole thing, or pieces of it or whatever, can make other people feel that same warmth. It's also a record you could most definitely f*ck to. Except "Astrology & Context" ‘cause that one's about Cancer.”

In between trolling the cast of Love is Blind while high on valium post-vasectomy, online feuding with Candace Cameron Bure and trying to get Tiger King out of jail, Koma, along with his bandmates Kris Mazzarisi (his brother), and Sam Beresford penned Sha La La ten transportive tracks, exploring masterful melody-making, sardonic lyrical specificity, and a profound sense of rock’n’roll timelessness. 

This summer Winnetka Bowling League will hit the road for a North American tour playing songs off Sha La La and other fan-favorites from their previous numerous EPs and singles. The dates kick off June 25 in Seattle, WA and end in New York City at The Bowery Ballroom on July 23. They will make a stop at the iconic Troubadour in Los Angeles on June 29. Reflecting frontman Koma’s inner world that collides comedy with music, buzzy stand-up comedian Veronika Slowikowska will support the New York show, Caroline Baniewicz will support in Chicago, and Stef Dag in Los Angeles. Indie up-and-comer Emi Grace will kick off the night on the West Coast, and Akira Galaxy in the east. In September Winnetka Bowling League will head back out on tour as the direct support for Mother Mother. All dates are listed below and tickets for all shows are on-sale now and available here.  

Winnetka Bowling League makes energetic and emotional power-pop songs about the good times that never last. On their debut album Sha La La, the Los Angeles trio of singer and guitarist Matthew Koma, his brother Kris Mazzarisi on drums, and keyboardist Sam Beresford tackle youth and nostalgia with biting wit and a soft core of relentlessly infectious hooks. Over 10 transportive and welcoming tracks, the band stuffs the album with masterful melody-making, sardonic lyrical specificity, and a profound sense of rock’n’roll timelessness. Thanks to Koma’s deft storytelling and tasteful production that reveres the records he grew up with, this LP is a thrilling and relatable ride from front to back. 

The origins of Winnetka Bowling League started with an existential crisis. Though Koma’s childhood was spent listening to Elvis Costello and Squeeze and growing up in the East Coast hardcore and punk scenes, most of his adult life had him writing songs for electronic musicians and pop stars. “It was successful and fruitful but I also absolutely despised it,” he says. “I felt like I was serving others and not really having the experience with music that I wanted to have.” He was still drawn to the rock music of his youth and wanted something rewarding and grounded that was wholly his. So, in 2018, he started a band. “It's very stupid to go to your pregnant girlfriend at the time and say, ‘Hey, I know we're about to have a kid but I'm going to stop working on big pop records and start a rock band,’" he jokes. 

Compared to his role as a pop and EDM songwriter and collaborator, this band gave him the freedom to explore what he truly loved about music. “What I grew up valuing were these poets and the storytellers,” says Koma. “That's what I was trying to channel with this project. I didn't want to consider anyone else's experience as much as I just wanted to tell the stories I wanted to tell… whether they're universal or weird, esoteric experiences that only make sense to me.” In 2018, Winnetka Bowling League released a self-titled EP that kickstarted a breathlessly prolific streak of singles through 2022 that included viral songs like “On the 5,” “CVS,” and “Slow Dances.” A debut album was Koma’s next hurdle and he knew he had to creatively best himself. 

“I've never put out an album before,” says Koma. “I've been signed to labels since I was 16 years old but something has always happened where I've never been able to put out an actual album. We live in a very ‘singles time’ so it didn't dawn on me to even think about making an LP.” When his friend Taylor Goldsmith, the frontman of the folk-rock band Dawes, suggested he try writing a full-length, Koma had all the motivation he needed. Early on in the process, he wrote a wistful but peppy song called “Sha La La,” which became the title of the album and the North Star for the rest of the tracklist. “Whenever I'm sitting down to work on a body of work, there's always one song that informs the rest,” he says. “I'm a sucker for the bittersweet and I am always after that feeling in my gut that dilutes the joy with some sadness: ‘Life is good, but how good is it? Was it better before?’ I think a lot about the past: more in a way of disbelief that it's over.” 

“Sha La La” with its woozy chorus and yearning lyrics became the bar for Koma to clear throughout the tracklist. Single “No One’s Ever Kissed You” reaches similar heights with its sweet dissection of what it means to truly be close to someone. Over lilting strings and enveloping synths, Koma sings, “Dialing your microdose of ketamine / To lullaby your senses from discovering / How you classify your mania as a signal of love / But it shouldn’t take so much to try & love someone.” He tackles the complexities of relationships with humor and heart but it comes from a more grounded place, “As somebody who's spent a lifetime writing like heartbreak songs, when you don't have our broken heart anymore you have to channel into something different so you can be honest,” says Koma.  

Throughout Sha La La, Koma’s hyperspecific approach to songwriting leads to laugh-out-loud moments like in “Breakfast For Dinner” where he sings, “It’s how I hate astrology, usually / But with you I’m eating it up.” But each one-liner is in service of an emotionally cathartic center like the snapshot of listening to Anderson.Paak at a Halal cart to frame the relationship autopsy “We’re Not Having Any Fun.” All the heart-on-sleeve storytelling is imbued with a keen sense of alt-pop euphoria, especially on “Handsome,” the incessantly catchy single. “It's not that deep,” jokes Koma of the track’s earworm chorus. “There's a lot on the record that's pretty serious but this was a fun tune that works as a palate cleanser.” 

Sha La La is a document of an artist rediscovering what he loves about music: a back-to-basics and grounded release that finds Koma taking risks while being in conversation with his younger self. “With this record, it wound up being a lot of looking back and a lot of trying to understand the twenty-something version of myself: what he was feeling and why he was feeling that way,” says Koma. “Being in a much different place in life now, I think I finally have a little perspective to be able to see it for what it was.” The resonant “America In Your 20s” captures this dynamic with lines like, “Is the party over? / Did tomorrow come too soon? / Is that what getting older is / The more you know, the less you do.” 

For Winnetka Bowling League, there’s power in this realization on Sha La La. Sure, the years pass faster the older you get but there’s a galvanizing joy in remembering and reclaiming both the good and the grit of youth. “Your 30s are a weird time reckoning your 20s,” says Koma. “In these tunes, I hope that people feel like they're revisiting versions of themselves when they hear it because that's what it felt like to me writing it.” 

WINNETKA BOWLING LEAGUE TOUR DATES

6/25 - Madame Lou's - Seattle, WA

6/26 - Mississippi Studios - Portland, OR

6/28 - Cafe Du Nord - San Francisco, CA (LOW TICKETS) 

6/29 - Troubadour - Los Angeles, CA (LOW TICKETS) 

6/30 - Valley Bar - Phoenix, AZ

7/02 - Meow Wolf - Denver, CO

7/11 - Uptown Theater - Kansas City, MO

7/12 - Lincoln Hall - Chicago, IL

7/13 - A&R Music Bar - Columbus, OH

7/15 - Exit/In - Nashville, TN

7/16 - Purgatory at The Masquerade - Atlanta, GA

7/17 - Cat's Cradle - Carrboro, NC

7/19 - Songbyrd Music House - Washington, DC (LOW TICKETS) 

7/21 - Sonia - Cambridge, MA

7/23 - Bowery Ballroom - New York, NY (LOW TICKETS) 

9/12 - Knitting Factory - Spokane, WA *

9/13 - Revolution Concert House and Event Center - Boise, ID *

9/14 - The Wilma - Missoula, MT *

9/17 - The Fillmore Minneapolis - Minneapolis, MN *

9/18 - Val Air Ballroom - Des Moines, IA *

9/20 - Steelhouse Omaha – Omaha, NE *

9/21 - The Factory at The District - St. Louis, MO *

9/22 - The Sylvee - Madison, WI *

9/24 - Egyptian Room at Old National Centre - Indianapolis, IN *

9/25 - House of Blues Cleveland - Cleveland, OH *

9/26 - Newport Music Hall - Columbus, OH *

9/28 - Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom - Hampton, NH *

9/30 - Toad's Place - New Haven, CT *

10/3 - The Orange Peel - Asheville, NC *

10/4 - The Fillmore Charlotte - Charlotte, NC *

* = support for MOTHER MOTHER 

Sha La La tracklisting

1.    Sha La La

2.    Noone’s Ever Kissed You

3.    We’re Broken Up (But Even More Together Now)

4.    Astrology & Context

5.    America in Your 20’s

6.    Handsome

7.    We’re Not Having Any Fun

8.    Breakfast For Dinner

9.    Jesus Saves

10.  Happy Adjacent

Photo Credit: Paige Sara

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