Gold Star - Uppers & Downers (2018) Hi Res

CA’s Gold Star — a/k/a Marlon Rabenreither — today announced that his new album, Uppers & Downers, will be released on September 7, 2018 via Autumn Tone Records. Noisey premiered new song “Half The Time,” calling it “all sun-dusted Stones vibes, loaded with big piano chords, cracked vocals, and a kind of ecstatic ennui,” while in the UK, Beat Magazine debuted “Chinatown.” Each song illustrates the dual sonic facets of the albums — its ‘ups’ (“Half The Time”) and ‘downs’ (“Chinatown”).

Uppers & Downers is stylistically and sonically like a collage, with its varied, timeless tracks each shining brightly as standalones, yet functioning together seamlessly as a whole. While the title refers to the highs and lows of life, the album also looks at everything in the spaces in-between. “The idea was to achieve a deeper scope, a more dynamic range: slow songs, fast songs, less genre specific, capturing all the moods,” says Rabenreither. Throughout, he draws from both his own life and conversations with friends to sing of the deeply personal and observational, with Los Angeles — its beauty, dark side, distinct neighborhoods, and ever-changing nature — serving as the rich, underlying connective tissue.

Uppers & Downers was recorded at Los Angeles’ historic Valentine Studios, recently renovated and reopened by Rabenreither’s producer friend, Nicolas Jodoin, and where artists including The Beach Boys, Frank Zappa, and Jackson Brown have all made music. It was the first time he’d worked in such a large, professional space, let alone on such hallowed ground, and it compelled Rabenreither to push himself throughout the process, while Jodoin — who had also worked on Gold Star’s 2012 debut — proved indispensable in shaping the overall lush, vintage sound of Uppers & Downers. The album also features Cameron Avery of Tame Impala (piano on “This Is The Year”), and Cole Alexander and Zumi Rosow of Black Lips (on “Chinatown”).