Holidays and Heat

I spent the early months of 2020 confined to my tiny apartment in London, climbing the walls due to shelter-in-place. Music has always been my outlet, but in not being able to go anywhere, I started thinking about the best places I’ve been. This led me on a kind of metaphysical journey to when I worked in LA in my 20s and had this place overlooking Venice Beach. Being young and wanting to be wise , I really got into this Chandler, Bukowski-driven kind of meditation on life—the vice, desire, depravity and humanity of it all. Going back through that time was a fun ‘trip’ in terms of the pandemic, but there were also parts I’d been avoiding thinking about, too. Suddenly, I couldn’t turn away from digging it all up—the good, the bad, everything. It made me remember how much I love LA, and the idea for ‘Nighthawks’ quickly followed: My love letter to a complicated city and the cast of characters that roam her beaches, bars and freeways.

The album is shaped like a mixtape for an all-nighter, tracing a sonic and thematic arc that runs from dusk &#39;til dawn. In true LA fashion, it&#39;s really the soundtrack for a long, meditative drive. It was entirely written, played and recorded by me at home, and coproduced by my friend and folk singer-songwriter <a href="spotify:artist:0mu7F2csWEqkkLNq1BagQ4" data-name="Franc Cinelli">Franc Cinelli</a>.