With a swirling combination of ’60s and ’70s-era classic rock and blues with the sunny sounds of SoCal-soaked surf rock, Carpool Tunnel have announced their debut full-length album Bloom. Due out February 26, 2021 via Pure Noise Records, Bloom puts the quartet’s sandbar psychedelic sound on full display creating something that’s both nostalgic and fresh.
In addition to today’s announcement, the band released a new single and accompanying music video titled “Flora,” a bouncy, vaguely nostalgic-sounding track with a sunny video to match.
“The soil of 2020 was dense, and some of us still feel like we’re underground. However, sometimes we need the darkness to reach the light,” shares the band. “’Flora’ is here to remind you that no matter how grim life may seem, there will always be sparks of light, love, and hope as long as we are open to them…then it is up to us to decide how large that spark grows.”
“’Dreaming Still’ pushes listeners to dream more, while also posing a question about how easy it is to overindulge as a way to escape reality” says the band on the new single. “As musicians, we understand how tempting it is to get caught up in daydreaming about the future, but we’ve come to understand the importance of breaking through that mental fog and working hard to reach success”.
Like many 21st-century relationships, Carpool Tunnel started with the swipe of an app. Just two weeks after an ad for Vampr – hailed as Tinder for musicians – came across Daniel Stauffer’s phone in 2017, the Bay Area drummer was in the studio along with two fellow Vampr users, guitarist Bradley Kearsley and singer/guitarist Ben Koppenjan, recording their debut single “Afterlight” with Grammy-nominated producer Billy Mohler.
One new member – bassist Spencer Layne – and a $400 Craigslist van later, the brilliantly named band hit the road, bringing their California cool aesthetic and classically retro sound up and down the coast. In this live setting, free-wheeling and bereft of perfectionist attitudes, the quartet began laying the foundation for their long-awaited debut full-length album, “Bloom”.
Months of road-testing the album’s 11 tracks in front of fervent audiences imbued a sense of spontaneity and looseness into the songs, letting them effortlessly evolve into the versions heard on the album. Across the set, the band brings the California coast to life through breezy rhythms and soothing melodies, from the slinky, bossa nova-flavored “Tarot Cards” to the bouncy, angular “Flora”.
The songs on “BLOOM” are of that same uncertainty, about navigating life’s newness and seemingly omnipresent obstacles heading into adulthood. They’re sentiments and situations the band experienced firsthand in 2018 after moving in together in San Francisco. As responsibilities like school and day jobs piled up next to the more joyous task of writing an album, the close quarters taught the members a lot about themselves – and one another.
“We were all trying to come out of adolescence and find ourselves” Koppenjan says of the mindset while writing the album. “The message we came up with was, ‘Like a flower, you too shall bloom’. We were all blooming into ourselves and finding our sound at the same time”.
