For a while, Bay area locals had to reconcile with the fact that FayRoy — a band named after an Indian Rocks beach cottage — were calling San Francisco home. Well the boys eventually came back to their roots, and their new LP, Heaven at Twenty-Seven, finds them at peace with the move and the direction their lives are headed.
"The band has really focused on our dynamic together. Diving in a little deeper to the songwriting process and becoming better musicians along the way," frontman Zack Hoag told CL in an email. "Our best friends play with us now, so the live show is a lot crazier and fun, [and we] always strive for it to be a positive experience and a community effort."
He says that the local scene has been really motivating since its saturated with so many quality homegrown bands. Hoag, 28, says that FayRoy is embracing the fact that they'll be doing the music thing for the rest of their lives.
"Heaven at Twenty-Seven came from the observation that roughly 99.9% of my musical idols passed away at my current age. Being aware of everything they made and accomplished within their lives and, aside from outliving them, thinking I may have just fallen short to these 'god' like aspirations," Hoag added. "Cliche mid twenties existential crisis stuff."
Most of the songs on the record — which was produced and engineered by Ricky Rosicky at Black Toe Studio in Seminole, Florida — take on this darker, minor chord tone, but had "swooping moments of total epiphany and peacefulness" according to Hoag.
"Kyle [Fournier] and I wrote this album as a means of coming into our own mental acceptance and confidence that we're living this music writing, constantly broke type lifestyle," he said about the record. "We're watching our friends buy houses and have kids and we are spending our time traveling to leaky pubs and not showering for days."
Listen to the beautiful nugget of sun-kissed, beach goth below. See it in real life on March 11, 2017 when FayRoy release the LP at Iberian Rooster. Additional details are available here.
This article appears in Mar 9-16, 2017.