Boyfriends

Themes of science fiction, sexual identity and relationships set the mood for Boyfriends’ forthcoming three-song 7”. The EP was recorded during a eight-song demo session in the basement of a Seattle Bank of America, better known as The Vault. The glam-punk group's music has a feminist slant, as is evident by songs from their debut EP DEMOS, which included tracks with titles like "Future Is Female."

Here's what the band has to say about their upcoming release:

"Ian Lesage engineered the recordings. The three songs appearing on the 7” are from this session. We were going for a sound combining some of our favorite bands from the late '70s and early '80s (Talking Heads, Gang of Four, The Cure) with lyrical content regarding themes and issues that are relevant to us now (science fiction, sexual identity, relationship crap)."

Catch Boyfriends live as they support their friends and fellow Seattle post-punk band Tacocat on tour, beginning April 16 at Comet Ping Pong in Washington D.C. - Culture Collide

Featured recently in the video for “I Hate the Weekend” from their local friends Tacocat—of whom the band refers to dearly as their girlfriends—Seattle’s Boyfriends premiere their single “I Thought We Had Plans” with news of an April tour with Tacocat. Proclaimed to be Seattle’s newest pop sensation, Boyfriends follow-up last year’s DEMOS with even groovier DIY jams that promise to keep you moving, and charmed. Avowed worshipers and fanatics from the church of Freddie Mercury superstar-the glamorous messiahs behind the buzz are vocalist Michael McKinney, guitarist Sergio Mirazo, bassist Shawn Randles, and percussionist Ian Dugas who also entertained us this past week with an entertaining roundtable interview.

“I Thought We Had Plans” is full of the fun spirit that has overtaken the northwest increasingly as of late. It’s no secret that there is always a cornucopia of new earth-breaking sounds consistently spilling out of Seattle for as long as this sleepy writer can recall, but Boyfriends can be counted in the ranks that embrace the awkward hero of everyday misadventures and other relatable short stories. Think about the way output from like-minded luminaries like Chastity Belt, Childbirth, Lisa Prank, Pony Time, Snuff Redux, So Pitted, Tacocat (naturally), Wimps, and so forth has made you smile even on the greyest of overcast days. Boyfriends continue this tradition of delight in the face of all obstacles where peppy angular guitars, intriguing tonal choices, fashionable thrift-store aesthetics (in sound, vision, & textile choices as well), and the ability to find the enthusiasm in everything that would probably be an otherwise letdown.

This is the anthem for anyone and everyone that has ever been stood up by anybody, anywhere. Boyfriends fully without any sense of overt self-consciousness or irony turn and face the strange of situations that don’t go as planned, and everything from there takes on the histrionic farce of a Fellini picture. The opening lyrics of “I Thought We Had Plans” sets the stage for chaos, with the impending possibility of calamity, catastrophe, and more already about to fly off the hinges. “He threw a lemon at her head, and must have broke a lamp instead, ‘what are we doing she screamed, we are undoing it seems…” This is the song that has it all for everyone, from Boyfriends’ accordion harmonizing intro that then shift-kicks into a high gear that is the sound of everything you have loved about the DIY and independent scenes now for forever. This is the sound of your favorite kiwi band from the Flying Nun catalog being channeled through the dorm rooms, patios, shared garage spaces, dives, pop-up party venues, and the bouncing bedroom pop of underground Seattle. Keep an eye out for more big things happening with Boyfriends, and be sure to read our interview with Michael, Sergio, Shawn, & Ian featured right after the following debut of “I Thought We Had Plans”.
Give us the lesser known story about how Boyfriends became a band.

Sergio: Michael and I have a mutual friend that insisted we would be great friends, and that we should play music together, but I dismissed that because everyone’s friend says that. Anyway he walked into my place of work one night right as I was re applying my lipstick and we fell in love. We messed around with a book on black magic one night and accidentally summoned Shawn to a dance party at michaels house.

Michael McKinney: We all met as members of the Freddy Mercury’s Teeth Official Fan Club. This led to the formation of Boyfriends.

Shawn Randles: We met later that week to play music for the first time, we played to a drum machine and wrote like 4 songs that day. we played at a party at Spruce Haüs that night under the name “Hotdogs”. Ian came a few days later when he sent us this enthusiastic Facebook message; Hello, I am interested in playing drums with ya’ll. Let me know when you practice. I hope to be a suitable fit. we hired him instantly.

How has Boyfriends grown together as a group from your demo batch to the new 3 track 7″?

Shawn: The three songs from the 7” were taken from the same session. Being in the studio together we leaned some choreographed dances. one of them is called “the new shoe dance” we have some video of it that may make it into a music video one day.

Michael:Our individual places in the band have been fully realized; Sergi is the sweet one, Dugi is the savory one, Shawny is the creamy one, and Mikey is the tangy one.

Describe what it was like making the new 7″?

Shawn: We recorded at The Vault in Seattle with Ian lesage. the studio is in an old bank vault underneath an operating bank of America. you have to shut the huge vault door each time you go in and out of the recording studio. But the studio has a really great vibe, its always the best feeling when you get to take a few days off work and make some songs with your friends!

Michael: Like being in a warm bed full of kittens.

Sergio: Hot fun. Like spicy pork with hot link.
Can you tell us what sorts of plans, and/or lack of plans inspired “I Thought We Had Plans”?

Ian: BuzzDaddys, Bongo Jams, and planned spontaneity.

Sergio: I’m not sure. We were listening to a lot of Blink 182 and New Order at the time. It seemed like a nice song to write.

Mike: Actually, it was inspired by some graffiti that started showing up in bar bathrooms around our neighborhood. A simple scrawl, I thought we had plans, accompanied by a sad face with a tear drop. Simple, obvious, sad, and soooo good. So we borrowed it for the title of the song and invented a little story to go along with it.

What are you all the most excited about for your tour with Tacocat? They are old school pals and heroes of ours, do send them the best from Impose!

Shawn: Going on tour with our girlfriends will be sweet fun!!! Cuddling with Bree in the tour van.

Michael: Pillow fights, spa days, hook-ups and drama.

Sergi: Looking at all the tall buildings! Never seen one of them! Also, hanging out with my girl squirrel Lelah. :B

Ian: WeedMilk!

What else have Boyfriends been working on behind the scenes?

Ian: Fresh Honey, my son Epsom, and Yankee Dandy.

Sergio: Leather and lace. - Impose

Seattle is spitting out so many great bands at the moment it’s hard to keep up, but you must not let these guys pass you by. Boyfriends are four dudes that are nestled deep in the scene alongside a bunch of other excellent feminist bands (they’ll be supporting Mommy Long Legs on tour very soon and are highly rated by Bree McKenna of Tacocat and Childbirth), and their hooky, scratchy, defiantly DIY tunes are a celebration of a landscape that lets bands of their ilk thrive. Take, for example, The Future Is Female, their stamping jam-out that claims the future for all girlkind – what a breath of fresh air. - Crack Magazine

"Do you have any clear topcoat, Mikey?"

Sergio Mirazo holds a hand in the air, his alternating red and seafoam green nail polish shining under draping bubble lights.

The four members of Boyfriends are sitting around Michael McKinney’s color-splashed apartment, leaning over a coffee table and touching up their nail polish while M.I.A.’s Matangi spins on the record player. They discuss their upcoming lipstick line with Tacocat, the band they relate to not only musically but also romantically. (Three out of four Boyfriends have partners in Tacocat; hence their name). Shawn Randles pulls back a bleach-blond lock and says, “You can write about our hair if you want.”

Boyfriends aren’t simply a feminist punk band. They exist outside the gender binary, singing its evolution.

McKinney, the lead singer, and Randles, the bassist, started Boyfriends less than two years ago. Mirazo came onboard as guitarist, followed by drummer Ian Dugas. A Bandcamp page adorned with a rainbow poodle and a four-song EP titled DEMOS is their lone Internet gatekeeper. But they’re releasing a 7” single this month—the first by new label Gold Van Records—and prepping for two tours, one with Mommy Long Legs and the other with Tacocat.

Seattle’s femme-focused punk scene is foremost a live experience. Built around a community of like-minded artists and bands, with pop songs that smash and rumble between politics, gentrification, feminism and relationships, the music requires presence and kinship. It is music that believes in the power of people and art to change the world at large. It lives squarely outside the vacuum of headphones, begging for sweat, demanding contribution.

The band’s songs are written off the cuff, built on a phrase or a beat or a bass line in their Capitol Hill rehearsal space, often finished in front of a crowd at venues like Chop Suey and all-ages haven the Vera Project. They use performance as a playground, not a product. With tight choruses that fall apart and spring back together over melodic bass, skittering drum fills and McKinney’s ’70s-style glam-punk vocals, they build energy less on composition and more on group dynamic. The participate-or-perish themes of the lyrics are mirrored in their execution.

The most single-worthy track on DEMOS is “Future Is Female.” The song’s chorus is the title repeated over and over, McKinney’s cries sharpening to a point above tight-spinning guitars. It celebrates the death of white male dominance at the hands of cooperative music, idealism in its rawest form. But music about political and personal revolution requires revolutionaries. The only way a societally male band could comfortably function within a feminist aesthetic is in complicity with the destruction of traditional gender roles. This is futuresex punk.

McKinney digs through a crate of records to pull out a mélange of ’70s LPs. “It’s just so positive,” McKinney says of the cadre of female-fronted bands—Mommy Long Legs, Chastity Belt, Childbirth, Wimps—that Boyfriends run with. “And all those people in all those bands we see on a regular basis, you know, around the neighborhood. It’s the best version of a music scene. Everyone is so supportive and so creative.”

It’s a comfortable incubator for the band, dwelling in the progressive echo chamber of Capitol Hill. They’re buoyed by an insular, passionate scene—and perhaps that’s enough. “We just want to be able to keep making music,” Mirazo says. “You know, not like we’re expecting to get huge, but to make enough to keep making music.”

But as a feminist and a fan, I don’t want it to be enough. I want Boyfriends to do more than that.

This band breaking beyond the gendered image of feminism is not glib or trendy. It is deeply important. They actively relate to much of the female narrative as supporters in the trenches. But to make the music as powerful as it can be requires a shift from cool ally to radical voice. It requires a band of non-females to own up as beneficiaries of a system they want to destroy.

With four short demo songs, declarations of people actively shedding their power, they’ve let loose the potential impact of their art. Boyfriends, cloaked in wit and spandex and baring their teeth, are just getting started. - City Arts