The Orange Peels - Celebrate the Moments of Your Life (2021) [Hi-Res]

The Orange Peels, the long-running indiepop group led by Alan Clapp, will release their first double album, Celebrate the Moments of Your Life, on July 16 via Minty Fresh. (Preorder yours.) While the title is a nod to some schmaltzy 1980s instant coffee ads, the band are also serious. It was a rough couple years for Clapp, with a bout of pneumonia, losing his father to cancer, and nearly losing his home to the California wildfires. “When you spend weeks wondering if you have a place to live, or even an address, it changes you,” Clapp says. “You have to forget your old life to a certain extent just to keep moving forward.”

It changed the sound of The Orange Peels, too, taking them into darker, noisier territory. Clapp is still a hook machine, but things don't sound quite as sunny. Take the first single from the album, "Human," which falls somewhere between The Cure and The Byrds sonically, and Clapp calls "a song for people who feel like they don’t belong." He adds, "There’s a message in verse 2 that sums it up: 'There’s no checkbox for what I am / who I am.’ We all need to feel like we belong to something, and when we feel like greater society doesn't have anything on offer, we’ll seek that connection and love wherever we can find it."