French Cassettes singer and songwriter Scott Huerta was living beneath a stairwell in San Francisco, CA (cramped, but only $200 a month) when he wrote what would become his band’s sophomore LP, Rolodex. “I adopted the mentality, which was probably unhealthy, that every song I wrote needed to be my favorite song,” he remembers. “I lost my mind so many times in the middle of the night.”
The eight tracks and 24 minutes of Rolodex are an epic statement of purpose in a decidedly taut package; hook-filled and rooted in pop, layered with intricate vocals and counter-harmonies, inventive percussion, and every shade of clean and fuzzy guitars stacked up like an orchestra. French Cassettes will release Rolodex on December 11 via Tender Loving Empire + today shared the video for the “disco-infused, power-pop, shimmering indie thrasher” (BreakThru Radio) “Utah” to announce the album that’s been eight years in the making.
“I watched a video of Bill Withers sweating out a tune in a turtleneck and that image just stayed in my mind,” says Huerta. “So this song is what I imagined a young Bill would sing to himself on a solo road trip to Utah in a FIAT Spider with nothing packed but a backup turtleneck. All we know about this guy is he just ‘needs to go fast’. Where to? No one knows… maybe Utah.”
Texas filmmaker Vanessa Pla and the band took their vision to the next level for this video. Why not actually go to Utah? So they managed to buy a 1981 Spider Fiat from an eccentric car lover named Dan, hoping that the car was as in good of shape as promised. “Unfortunately, Fiat really stands for Fix It Again Tony,” said Pla. “We learned more about car engines than expected and surrendered to the vast beauty of Utah’s landscapes. It was an incredible adventure and we thankfully made it back safe.”
The four members of French Cassettes, which also includes Mackenzie Bunch on lead guitar, Huerta’s brother Thomas on bass, and Rob Mills on drums, have been friends since their teenage years in the sleepy town of Ripon, CA; the Huerta brothers grew up on an almond orchard. After graduating from high school, however, the band slowly began making their way to San Francisco, where they hunkered down far away from the hubbub of city life, just blocks from the foggy Pacific Ocean.
The band released the Summer Darling EP in 2011, and their debut full-length, Gold Youth, in 2013. That year the Huerta brothers’ grandmother died. The loss was both deeply personal and creative: she hadn’t just been their link to a mother the Huerta boys never got to know as adults, she been strong, hilarious, and endlessly surprising—and a big French Cassettes fan. “Growing up, she’d always offer me feedback on my songs,” Scott remembers. “And I always wanted to make my songs great so she’d have even more to say about them.”
Huerta’s playful and verbose lyrics are often presented as semi-autobiographical puzzles and Mackenzie Bunch’s alternately lush and angular guitar is a tone-setting centerpiece of Rolodex, from the unfurling, harp-like strums on opener “Dixie Lane” to the shimmering dance riffs on “Utah.” For his part, though, Bunch credits the younger Huerta for the band’s most unique qualities. “Scott’s vocal melodies and harmonies, those are my favorite parts of these songs,” he says. “They’re intricate, high-level stuff with a lot of counter-melodies.”
This might be most evident on the playful and cascading “Isn’t Anyone?,” a song that showcases Huerta as an impassioned crooner, a trickster poet, and a one-man choir. Even on the album’s seemingly straightforward soul-pop closer, “So Good”—which finds everyone grooving in unison over a Rob Mills quasi-breakbeat—there are myriad twists and sonic buried treasures to discover.
Whatever the source of French Cassettes’ newfound growth and experimentation, it’s a wonder to behold. This music doesn’t sound like anything else in the known indie-rock universe. Its music that takes a lot of repeated listens to fully unravel—and music that could very well make a person drop everything, gasp, and say “I love this song.”
