NATL PARK SRVC "PSYCHIC FRIENDS FAIR" AND "THE FUTURE IS NOW" ALBUM REVIEWS
It’s 2019 and NATL PARK SRVC has been incredibly busy putting out three fantastic EPs: “Oliver” (March), “Psychic Friends Fair” (August), and “The Future is Now” (November). Both “Psychic Friends Fair” and “The Future is Now” are impossibly hooky EPs, with riffs that will grab your attention and have vocal lines that will keep you humming a week later. Both EPs are tied together with references to the EPs’ titles throughout. “Psychic Friends Fair” starts off with my favorite song on the EP, “Part Two;” the song is slow building and contains a truly catchy as fuck instrumentals. “Part Two” also contains an upbeat sound that masks the less than upbeat lyrics, my favorite being “Pouring red into cheap wine glasses, that’s when I write all of the classics. Distorted bottles of plastic, you’re in love with my sadness.” After “All The Moves,” a tune about a much older seeming boss trying to put moves on a young stock boy, and “Beach Closed,” a groovy rock track that comes off as dark story wise, but I can’t place why, is “No Time to Waste,” a fun bittersweet song that I feel is another solid highlight. The song has a definite reckless teen energy, especially on lyrics like “We have lots to do; Fuck Shit up, swim in someone else’s pool.” “Ruby” rounds out “Psychic Friends Fair” with a rockabilly style ballad about Ruby losing herself for a moment of fame and money. While both EPs will have you swaying along and tapping your toes, “The Future is Now” dials up the rock and has a deeper depth of sounds through out. “Madeleine” welcomes you with the first words you hear on the EP “Take six,” which is one of several extra audio clips left in throughout both EPs and I personally really enjoy having them included. A faster paced song, “Madeleine” is rockier and a definite bop that will have you nodding along. My favorite track is “J.W.A.P.R.,” which is a pain to type, but a pleasure to listen to. I love the gang vocals on the choruses, which is something that is hinted at on other tracks, but really only fully appear on this song. The single off “The Future is Now,” “J.W.A.P.R.” is a comment on society, calling out the rich, over zealous police, ICE, and gentrification. I think the perfectly understated line “At best we’re doing fine” sums up the mood of the song. “Heaven, Too” concludes “The Future Is Now.” It’s a fuller, more-grand song, that reminds me of a Jimmy Eat World song, though I’m not sure which one (“Cautioners,” “Hear You Me,” “Your House”?). With a slow, swelling instrumental build and passionate vocals over top, there is just so much to love about this song. Both “Psychic Friends Fair” and “The Future is Now” are full of hooky riffs and I dare you to try to hold still through either one of these amazing EPs.
Album art for NATL PARK SRVC’s “Psychic Friends Fair”
(Melodic Noise) How's your day going?
(NATL PARK SRVC) Goooood! Enjoyin' some coffee at the moment.
(MN) Band name?
(NPS) "NATL PARK SRVC", twelve letters, all caps
(MN) Band members?
(NPS) Our current lineup is Dylan Woytcke (He/Him, also the guy answering here) who does the singy stuff and guitar stuff, Jared Leger (He/Him) who does all the twinkly guitar bits, Josue Hernandez (He/Him) banging on drums, Nathan Zillmer (He/Him) on bass guitar, and our most recent addition Sam Tudor (He/Him) who is playing violin with us. Sweet guys, lots of fun.
(MN) What’s the band’s origin story?
(NPS) NATL PARK SRVC started as a solo project of mine (Dylan) where I was doing like Frank Ocean covers and ambient music, but it quickly became pretty evident that I didn't really want to do any of this by myself so Nathan and Josue joined and we started writing songs. Jared joined us shortly before we started recording our first EP, and the rest is history. Sam joined like three days ago as of writing this.
(MN) Genre?
(NPS) This question always gets me, I don't really know. Indie rock probably, but there's influences from all sorts of music we love. "Proto Post-Punk with Undertones of Emo" says my father haha.
(MN) Label?
(NPS) Not yet! Hey if you're reading this and wanna sign us to your sweet label hit us up! Please?
(MN) What is the story behind the EPs’ titles?
(NPS) Psychic Friends Fair (August 30th 2019)
My great aunt Jan is this infinitely cool and kinda strange woman, and she had given this notepad to my parents that said "Psychic Friends Fair, Mall of America" which was this big gathering in like 2001 where all these people who were into psychic readings got together to do... psychic reading stuff? I think it was related to that hotline they had in the '90s-'00s where you call and someone would read you a fortune. I loved the notepad, still have it, and I have this weird fascination with the occult. Not weird in like a John Travolta/Dan Akyroyd way, but weird enough to make me use it in a lot of artistic ways. I used it as kind of an allusion to when you're in high school and all you wanna do is get really loaded with your buddies. I did that stuff a lot in high school, and I always felt super fucking anxious, like "these people can read my mind, they know I feel terrible, they're gonna make fun of me" Turns out they couldn't, and they were just good friends. Love them all. Most of the songs on PFF date back to high school or shortly after, so it worked.
The Future is Now (November 15th 2019)
The name of this EP came after we started piecing it together. We kind of knew we wanted to do a response to the lyrical immaturity, youth, and impatience of Psychic Friends Fair, so we decided to talk about how we feel now about those things. If it was a narrative, EP3 is the sequel that takes place 4 years after Psychic Friends Fair, so it is the "future" for those characters. It's a mental health kind of thing, it's coming to terms with stuff that happened years ago, and the best time to do that is now.
(MN) Lyrically what stands out on the EPs?
(NPS) Psychic Friends Fair:
A lot of these lyrics are us basically wallowing in problems instead of dealing with them in a realistic way. "Ugh my boss is hitting on me, ugh I'm super anxious but I'm still gonna smoke pot, ugh hurry up and love me please." It's kinda silly, kinda high-school B.S. but that's just the way things are for you when you're that age. We didn't want to sugar coat being immature when we were high school. We cringe at it to this day.
The Future is Now:
Lyrically speaking, we wanted to add to this ultra-meta world that is NATL PARK SRVC. It's super self-referential. The Psychic Friends have grown up, and they're cringing at the old shit they used to do and feel, or somebody else is telling them it's time to grow up. Sometimes, they learned, sometimes they didn't, sometimes, tragedy struck and they're dealing with it. More on that next year.
(MN) What was the inspiration behind the EPs?
(NPS) Psychic Friends Fair:
Sonically, we wanted to make a "punk" record cause being new to the scene we were like "This is the only thing that works here, we're screwed!" but not only did the record not turn out to not be very punk, what we thought was totally untrue and everything turned out juuuust fine.
The Future is Now:
We weren't gonna make another EP, we were gonna head straight to re-mixing and mastering the OLIVER EP and work on a full length, but then we started doin' other songs and writing songs that weren't fitting what we wanted for the album, and we quickly decided it would be great to make another EP. This time around we wanted to make it sort of about the process of making it, which I think is in tune with the sound of it and the album cover etc. It's feels sort of "intentionally messy" if you will. We left a lot of the mistakes in on purpose, to make it feel more in the moment and in-process.
(MN) Is there something that connects the songs together?
(NPS) There's a pretty loose narrative, a lot of the characters reprise their roles in all of our music. It's a pretty meta world, NPS.
(MN) Are you all local to the Twin Cities?
(NPS) We're all Minnesota locals, from various suburbs of the Twin Cities and slightly beyond. Great place to live.
(MN) What are your influences and Minnesota influences?
(NPS) We're pretty inspired by all the local music we're surrounded with, locally-speaking. On a grander scale though we get told we sound like The Strokes a lot, which is a good thing I hope haha! WU LYF, Arcade Fire, The 1975, Steely Dan, The Ramones, Bombay Bicycle Club, Bright Eyes, Mac DeMarco, Frank Ocean. We're pretty big into jazz as well. Oh, Big Thief too. Too many to name.
(MN) Favorite current Twin Cities artists?
(NPS) Floodwater Angel, Harper's Jar, Kate Malanaphy, CA$UAL, Bob Ross Mob Boss, and a bunch of the big label signed artists everyone looooves.
(MN) Favorite venue to play and see shows in Twin Cities?
(NPS) Playing house shows is an absolute blast always everytime. As for venues with publicly documented locations, Seward Cafe is great, and we'd love to play 7th Street..
(MN) What can fans expect when they come to your show?
(NPS) Come with your dancing shoes on. Generally our music is pretty upbeat and/or there's a lot of movement in the arrangements. Sometimes we play the sad boi songs, in which case bring tissues.
(MN) Do you have a favorite/crazy memory of playing a show?
(NPS) We did our PFF release show at our house, and so many people showed up and actually knew the lyrics and the songs, and sang them back to us. It was insane, and really moving for us. It meant a lot to us, and it was pretty eye-opening moment. We thought "Oh man this actually works." and also Nathan broke a bass string, which was mental.
(MN) Who are your dream tourmates?
(NPS) Locally? Floodwater Angel. May or may not be in the works, who knows! Other than that pretty much any big band we listed while stating our influences. NATL-PArcade-Fire-SRVC-Tour when?
(MN) What do you like about living in the Twin Cities?
(NPS) It's a really open-minded area to live! People are really really welcoming, and it's nice to be mostly comfortable where we live.
(MN) Is there anything that sets the Twin Cities scene apart from places you've toured?
(NPS) We've never toured. Soon!
(MN) What are your favorite places to grab food or drink in the Twin Cities?
(NPS) Bryn Mawr Pizza is seriously OP. Hard Times Cafe, Cuppa Java, Wendy's. Ugh, I'm hungry now.
(MN) What are the band's plans for the future?
(NPS) We've got a ton of shows coming in the next month or so, and then we're taking a little break through the winter to finish up finalizing the full-length, writing wise. We've got a lot of it done already, and I expect people will be very very (pleasantly) surprised. Unless you know us personally, in which case they've probably heard us talk about the record over and over again. Cheers to NATL PARK SRVC LP1 in 2020!
You can check out all three EPs on Spotify and Bandcamp.
And make sure to catch NATL PARK SRVC live:
November 21, 2019 at Ed’s Bar
November 22, 2019 at The Como Backdoor
January 6, 2020 at 7th Street Entry
Review and Interview by: Andrew Perrizo
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