STACK #151 May 2017

MUSIC FEATURE

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The third album from childhood friends San Cisco – Jordi Davieson, Nick Gardner, Scarlett Stevens and Josh Biondillo – has emerged from the ocean, and she's a shiny pop beauty.We spoke to Davieson about why it doesn't matter what he thinks the songs are about, going mad with vocal effects, and the weird and wonderful influence of producer Steve Schram. Words Zoë Radas

S an Cisco’s third album, The Water , jitterbugs all across all the best kinds of pop: it’s like funk-dance-disco, with lots of smart and cute details, far

leave it. We need the ice-cream truck.’” There are so many touch-points throughout the track: you might hear Split Enz, or The Love Cats , or any slightly robo-manic allusion, but Davieson reveals the group's concentrated effort to relate these tracks to their previous work when he says it was intended as the equivalent to Too Much Time Together, San Cisco’s first single from 2015’s Gracetown . In a little nod which harkens all the way back to the group’s break-out 2012 hit,

Jordi Davieson identifies the sprightly honky- tonk keyboard line on stand-out That Boy as “possibly the most poppy thing on

the record,” amongst quite a lot of poppiness. “That keyboard riff that Josh [Biondillo] did… I describe it as an ice-cream truck,” Davieson says. “It’s so sweet. He was like

more synth than we’ve previously heard, and that Vampire Weekend kind of agility. Frontman and primary songwriter

I like vocal effects and

weird, electric, robotic things

‘I’m not sure, I think it’s a bit much,’ and I said ‘Nup,

Photo: Matsu

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MAY 2017

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