Ceylon Sailor - Nowhere In Your Eyes
Let the backlash begin because the kids are sick of AI and Ableton-generated music. They’re craving wounded romantics, scruffy guitars, subversive hooks, ramshackle orchestral touches, and communal venues, record labels, and studios. Brooklyn-based countrygaze quintet Ceylon Sailor is right on time.
“I live for 1990s indie rock—to me that is the only indie rock,” shares KM Sigel, the band’s vocalist, guitarist, and main songwriter. “I wanted to do something that has that 1990s organic sound. Something that feels alive with recorded moments that are maybe a bit messy.”
Ceylon Sailor’s debut album, Here We Lie, out [insert release date here], on boutique indie Stunning Models (The Fictionals, Will Stratton and Scheffer Stevens), is an exhilarating throwback meticulously crafted to adhere to lo-fi, chamber pop parameters. The album was recorded with only analog instruments; there are no drum edits; and everything that sounds like an electric guitar is an acoustic distorted within two inches of its life. The surging single, “Nowhere In Your Eyes,” precedes the album.
The single Nowhere In Your Eyes charges forward like a herd of elephants with a fanfare of horns, incessant acoustic guitar strumming, an almost Ramones-like bassline, and sloppy-to-perfection, Ringo Starr-style drums. The song’s elegant yearning, and doe-eyed romantic lyrics recall the Beatles. KM’s opening lines are heart-in-throat emotive. He sings: I could have lived In the air you left behind/crumbs you cast aside/Soft words you couldn’t find. “I like those moments where you hear a line from a song, and it’s like you and the lyricist now have this shared secret and experience,” KM says.
