Brooklyn-based trio Patio is a band whose lyrics feel like spoken word poetry, and whose sound has an angular and transcendental feel. Patio is made up of Loren Di DiBlasi on bass and vocals, Lindsey-Paige McCloy on guitar and vocals, and Alice Suh on drums.
Patio just released their highly awaited debut LP, Essentials, via Fire Talk Records on April 5th, and this week, we had the pleasure of talking with them about the making of their record and coming up with a new dance move called “The Revenge”:
Can you tell us about the making of your record? Where you recorded it? Where you wrote the songs?
Essentials was recorded in Toronto in summer 2017. We recorded at Union Sound Company with engineer Ian Gomes, and our friend Shehzaad Jiwani (Greys) produced it. The songs were written at varying times throughout the past few years, but some of the lyrics were cobbled together right before we left and in the studio itself.
Your lyrics are very poetic; what other lyricists and poets inspire you?
Loren: Mark E. Smith, Cate LeBon, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Anna Akhmatova, John Keats.
LP: I would never have been able to finish writing the lyrics to this record were it not for a few collections of plays and short stories: the complete Flannery O’Connor, Cities I’ve Never Lived In by Sara Majka, August Strindberg’s Five Plays and a Chekhov collection that included Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard.
Loren, you are a writer for various outlets; how does writing and music writing come together for you? Is it similar or different?
For me, writing lyrics and writing nonfiction are pretty similar, in that the words tend to come from some vague, unknown dream state inside my head. For example, if I’m writing a review of another band’s music, I have to spend a lot of time listening and not writing anything at all in order to find that spark of what I’m trying to say. It’s a similar process with music—I can’t force it.
If your band could have written the soundtrack to any movie what would it be?
Rosemary’s Baby.
I would LOVE to hear that. How did you three meet and start playing together?
Alice and LP went to college together, and Loren met LP through a mutual friend. LP gave Loren a bass to borrow and the rest is history.
Did you play in other bands when you were younger? What kind of music did you grow up listening to?
Loren: I did not play in bands or play music at all growing up. As a kid, I didn’t pay much attention to music but I definitely loved pop artists like Spice Girls and Destiny’s Child. I’d say at around 12 or 13, I got really into early 2000s indie rock, then that soon progressed to discovering a lot of 70s/80s post-punk bands that eventually influenced Patio.
LP: I sang in choirs and played piano through college. I didn’t start playing in bands until my senior year of college, and I started teaching myself to play around the same time. I listened to a lot of country music growing up (and also the Spice Girls) and didn’t really get into “indie rock” until I started working at my college radio station.
Alice: I’ve never played in a band before this one, but I did play the violin since I was around 10. I think the order of my music-listening went something like: Barney, Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Ja Rule, and then some mixture of emo/pop-punk/dance-punk, early 2000s indie rock songs downloaded from Kazaa, and the local classic rock radio station by my teen years. There was also an obsessive Elvis Presley moment around age 12.
Nice! I like that the Spice Girls are a major influence for you; they are for my all-female band as well. If you could sit down with anyone from history, who would it be and what would you ask them?
Selena Quintanilla. “What do you think of the 1997 biopic Selena starring Jennifer Lopez?”
If you could make up a new dance move to go along with your album what would it be and what would it be called?
The dance would involve standing completely still and emoting as little as possible. It would be called “revenge.”
YES. Thanks for talking with us, Patio! Check out their LP, Essentials, via Fire Talk Records below, and be sure to check them out May 17 at Union Pool for the Dehd record release show with Gustaf.