Love Jerks
San Francisco, California, United States | Established. Jan 01, 2015
Music
Press
San Francisco band Love Jerks (Bryan Garza of Scissors for Lefty and Rebecca Bortman of Happy Fangs) made their live debut Saturday with a bunch of spacey, danceable love songs with beautiful harmonies. Rebecca Garza-Bortman struck poses in her red pantsuit against a video screen. Their performance style was pure performance art, with a “virtual drummer,” astronauts and flamingos. - RIFF Magazine
“I thought Rebecca was gorgeous and extremely talented, and I really wanted to meet her,” he said. “She had that magic factor on stage in terms of being able to connect with her audience. I figured at worst, our bands would do a show together, and at best Rebecca and I might become friends.” - The New York Times
"We plant pop songs before going to bed. After a night of dreaming, we awake to find them wonderfully corrupted by some ethereal fog or post-punk concoction. You know, just like a chia pet, you never know what you’ll find in the morning." - Music in SF
Now, the newlyweds are letting ET in on the celebration with the exclusive video in the player above and spilling all on the complex planning process. Read on for how the duo pulled off one of the most elaborate and creative weddings we've ever seen! - Entertainment Tonight
“Instead of patching together their musical life into their ceremony, they scrapped the ceremony and wrote a wedding musical instead. Rather, a martial rock opera.” - GQ
“The psychedelic track has the lovebirds trading off on lead vocals, and that combination, along with their hazy, old-school instrumentation, is about as beautiful as Bortman’s account of her first date with Garza.” - Nerdist
“Maybe it’s the nice weather, or simply the video and the song’s all too rare reminder that sometimes love is actually fun!” - Bullett
"...sounds like Karen O and Jarvis Cocker teamed up with The Flying Lizards" - Ghettoblaster
"With a sound that screams early ’90s, Love Jerks’ latest single “Apocalyptic Make-Out” is packed with energy and boppy staccato downbeats..." - Alternative Press
"If you’re looking for witty, whimsical, and totally whacked album to entertain you this weekend, then head to Bandcamp and pick up Love, Jerks‘ Million Movies... [the] debut LP is an absolute riot. Think Deerhoof after each band member has consumed a dozen espressos..." - The Revue
If the debut album Million Movies by San Francisco's husband and wife duo Love Jerks had come out about 40 years ago, it's likely that they would've been tapped for the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack. The album is unlike anything else, combining over-the-top emotion with corn-syrup-sweetened lyrics and a delivery so ironic that it becomes serious. Teeny-boppers face doomsday on the high-speed track "Apocalyptic Make-Out," featuring the tongue-in-cheek chorus of "Oh owww. Squeezing these. Kissing that." Love-birds spin "round & round" on "Gold Sparkle," the perfect prom song for the hopelessly and embarassingly smitten. The self-titled track begins with Bryan declaring "You've got some fangs, but it don't get me upset / I'll bring the blood, if you bring the turtleneck." On this album, love is weird. It's fanatic, fleeting, fabulous. And, most of all, it's grand. Because what could be better than two love jerks finding each other and forgetting the rest? Get a little closer to synth-pop heaven and stream Million Movies below and keep an eye out for the Love Jerks' next live show. - Lilly Milman - The Deli
Like ferns scrubbing the carbon dioxide from the air whilst simultaneously injecting the atmosphere with life-giving oxygen, Love Jerks took in the collective apathy and breathed out soul-warming energy.
The Love Jerks take silly very seriously. Backed up by pre-recorded music accompanied by projected images of costumed drummers floating through fantastical backgrounds, married duo Rebecca Garza-Bortman (formerly of Happy Fangs and My First Earthquake) and Bryan Garza (Scissors for Lefty) are fun to watch because they are clearly having the time of their lives on stage. It’s a beautiful thing when performers seem so perfectly content on stage — like there’s no place else they’d rather be.
There’s an immediate comparison to Devo that springs to mind. Clad in matching jumpsuits, the duo look absurdly official. They’re reporting for business, and their business just happens to be rocking out. The comparison doesn’t end with the passion for one-piece uniforms. Like Devo, Love Jerks explore themes of destruction and impending doom — both external and internal — with all the catchiness of the Shangri-Las. If there was such a genre as Bubblegum Desolation, many of the Love Jerks' quirky ballads would fit nicely there. It’s a little reminiscent of the absurdist humor of someone like Maria Bamford, only set to song and not nearly as self-deprecating.
You can’t deny that the Jerks also have a Devo-like love for technology. Many bands have some sort of visual element to their performances — a silly green screen video projected behind a band is nothing new. However, I’ve never seen a band incorporate this element so seamlessly and thoughtfully into their performance. Not merely an added bonus or something pretty to look at, the projections used by the Jerks became, in a way, a third member of the band. The timing of these elements was spot-on, and the projections were a critical factor in the equation totalling not just the feeling of each song, but the experience of the music in total. They employed a masterful exploration of multimedia — inventive but not distracting.
But what about the music?
Simply amazing. Combining a little bit of the Carpenters with a dash of the Strokes and the sweet soulfulness of Laura Nyro, the Jerks have a sound that appeals to many without being boringly mainstream. Garza-Bortman has a tremendous voice — hitting difficult notes so casually. It reminded me of the steady charm of Cyndi Lauper — throwing in these feats of musical mastery around like it’s their pleasure to do so. Garza is no slouch, either. His playing was precise without being pretentious.
I can’t imagine there being any bad days in the Love Jerks household. They create a world on stage where fantasy is normalcy and there’s always a reason to smile. - The Bay Bridged
Discography
Still working on that hot first release.
Photos
Bio
Love Jerks is a San Francisco duo who make dream-pop ballads and glam-rock anthems with a flair for the cinematic. Love Jerks is for anyone who’s ever gazed out a train window, starring in their own John Hughes movie in their head. (Maybe there’s a smidge of David Lynch.)
Love Jerks is for people who want to be dancing when the world ends.
The offspring of two lead singers—Bryan Garza of Scissors for Lefty (vocals, guitar) and Rebecca Garza-Bortman of Happy Fangs and My First Earthquake (vocals, bass)—Love Jerks was born when these two jerks, yes, fell in love. They met in a rock club; got married in a rock club; and somewhere in between they discovered a mutual affection for Grimes, The Pretenders, and French pop from the 1960s.
The result feels fated. On Million Movies, Love Jerks’ debut full-length, due out fall 2018, wry lyricism, playful melodies, and tendency to be tongue-in-cheek belie a deep reverence for the pop song as an art form. The influence of New Wave and art-rock titans like David Bowie, Debbie Harry, Jarvis Cocker, and Cyndi Lauper seeps from every guitar riff and each warm, infectious synth hook. More moody, modern torch-carriers like Tame Impala can be heard in the wistful spaces between vocals, which the singers share in a kind of sonic banter. At live shows, the pair’s DIY video projections (including some starring a virtual, psychedelic animal drummer) lend each song fresh color and verve.
Love Jerks also represents an experiment, then, a meeting of musical minds: What happens when two born songwriters decide their romance is a sandbox—or a stage?
A San Jose native, Garza had been an established name in Bay Area music for nearly a decade thanks to Scissors For Lefty (who’s toured with Smashing Pumpkins and Arctic Monkeys, among others) when he caught Bortman with Happy Fangs in 2013, at San Francisco’s Bottom of the Hill.
“She possessed something that lead singers rarely possess,” he remembers. “I thought it would be awesome if we became friends.” He reached out to suggest their bands play a show, or maybe try writing music together. Two years later, that magnetic frontwoman said yes to his marriage proposal onstage at the very same club.
Bortman, in turn, proposed that the couple write music for their wedding, and before long they were throwing a full-fledged rock opera. In a 2015 ceremony/party/show covered by GQ and ET Online the couple literally sang themselves down the aisle at the Chapel, an aptly named San Francisco music hall. With the help of a wedding party made of backup singers and bandmates, they performed eight original songs — including the almost meta “Doing It Our Way” — that form the core of their debut.
Million Movies is seeped in self-awareness, and it looks outward as well. “We fully acknowledge that love is kind of eye-rolly and annoying to others,” says Bortman, a longtime San Franciscan by way of Pennsylvania. “Hence the jerks.” Songs like “Apocalyptic Makeout” dance with more global anxieties, considering what it means to live a big, honest, and emotionally vulnerable life in present-day America.
Still, the central fears and joys that color the record are those of a breathtaking crush finding solid ground — not to mention two lead singers learning to share one song. Every romance has its own particulars and peculiarities; its soft moments and car chases; its sloppy fights and golden-hour kisses. It’s all incredibly unique and specific, and by the time the credits roll, it’s also the oldest story in the world.
Love Jerks knows all this. Here is their soundtrack.
Band Members
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