Logan Broyles | SDUN Reporter
After a seven-year break, indie pop duo The Blow emerges from the recording studio to release a much-anticipated self-titled album.
The electronic-pop group consists of founding member and lead singer Khaela Maricich and Melissa Dyne. To celebrate their latest release, the two are playing at The Casbah on October 29 for only $15, with opening performances by Kisses and Love Inks.
This will be the pair’s first album recorded together. The Blow started as a solo project by Maricich, later joined by Jona Bechtolt (of the band YACHT) for her first few albums before meeting Dyne.
“Melissa and I first met in 2004 in Portland for the CBA Festival; I was doing several projects that year at the Festival and she was there because she was looking into projects for the next year,” Maricich recalled. “We were both new in town and didn’t have many friends, so we started hanging out together.”
The pair began playing together as The Blow in 2008 when they both moved to New York City.
At a typical live show, Maricich takes the stage as the singer while Dyne stays behind the audience working on the soundboard and controlling the visual elements of the show.
After several years playing together, they decided to record and release the first album as The Blow. They took their time with the recording process and have been very pleased with the reaction they’ve received from fans since its release on October 1.
“With neither of us being professionally trained at making music, we both kind of approached it as kind of a fun experiment,” she continued. “I think it’s experimental, but there is an undertone of Pop behind it.”
This off-color genre has a lot of roots in more traditional pop songs that most people would be familiar with. The duo tries to make new sounds that have never been heard before, but they are always layered over a foundation that originates from classic pop songs and styles.
“We’re both really influenced by the classic American songs that everyone can agree on, the kind of stuff that you’ll hear at any diner across the country because everybody thinks that it’s a good song,” Maricich explains. “I think music that brings people together that otherwise have nothing else in common is the kind of music that we love and aim for.”
With such a familiar yet original sound, the writing process can be unpredictable for the pair, but this unconventional process often leads to some of their best work.
“We don’t have things planned out in advance, I think you just try and stuff comes out of you as a musician and you don’t even know what it’s going to be exactly beforehand,” Maricich said. “It’s like having a kid, once it’s created you look at it from there and realize what you’ve actually done. The results can be surprising.”
After all these years, Maricich and Dyne are still growing as musicians and perfecting their craft. With limited formal training in producing music, things can be somewhat cluttered at times, but that can actually be a good thing for them, because it frees them up to make their own style of music rather than copying a set formula.
“We didn’t know how to do everything so we had to stay up late at night learning how to program things or get the right beat to a song,” Maricich said. “It was really rewarding after all that hard work to be able to listen to it and say ‘I did it!’
“The new album was this fun challenge for ourselves, we really did it all by ourselves and didn’t bring anyone in to help produce things,” she said. “We had a little portable recording setup that we could bring around and record different sounds.”
Maricich explained that the best part of being in the band is getting to share their music with their fans at live shows because of the usually eclectic crowd that attends.
For tickets and more info: casbahmusic.com
