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Artist
Violents & Monica Martin
12+ albums
indiealternativedream pop
about
Awake and Pretty Much Sober is the debut full-length album from multi-instrumentalist and producer Jeremy Larson, AKA Violents, and vocalist Monica Martin (of Phox). Colorful, effervescent, honest, and emotive, the record turns the traditional “duets album” on its head, offering up its own version of electronic-influenced pop music along the way. The pair recorded Awake and Pretty Much Sober in Nashville, where Larson had already produced several Violents EPs featuring different female vocalists. With Martin, he found a particularly unique collaborator. After recording some initial demos, the two realized they were onto something special, something different, something deeper. Something that, like the album’s own title, was filled with both the clear-headed clarity of an early-morning wakeup call and the lovely, woozy swoon of a buzz that had yet to clear. Stacked with string arrangements, electronic samples, pop melodies, bursts of piano, layers of vocal harmonies, and blasts of brass, their collaboration bridges the gap between two musicians from different ends of the musical spectrum. (Larson is a classically-trained pianist, string arranger, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, while Martin is a vocalist who spent the previous half-decade fronting the Midwest folk-pop band Phox.) Those different backgrounds come together on album highlights like “How It Left,” where an R&B groove run beneath airy, atmospheric synths, and “Equal Powers,” a slow-motion dance song that b
