EARLY BRANCH IS a new project, but they’ve mapped out a busy and committed future for themselves. Singer and guitarist Jamie Mole started the band with the intention of it being a solo venture, but soon realized its potential as a band and enlisted two friends to play with him.
”My best friend played bass, so I decided to get a band together. And then I contacted an old high school friend of mine who I knew played drums, and we got together on July 3rd and started jamming around,” Mole tells Connect ahead of the band’s CD release show at El Rocko Lounge on Jan. 11.
The lineup features Mole, bassist Ben Freund, and drummer Turner Magbee.
Though they’ve only been together a short time, their debut EP doesn’t sound at all like they’re new to the game in any way. It’s tight, well-written, and realized - all things that new bands often don’t experience right off the bat. Musically, Mole says the band was influenced primarily by more modern psych-rock bands.
”I’d say the biggest influences are Tame Impala, Arctic Monkeys, Mac Demarco, Deerhunter - lots of psychedelic rock bands,” he says. “We all are into psychedelic rock bands so we knew we wanted that sound. But we wanted our own sound, so we’ve been working hard to have our own floaty, shoegaze-y sound.”
The results of that quest for psychedelia are on full display on Mirror, the band’s first EP and the first in a series of three projects that are all connected thematically.
”We recorded the whole thing from September through middle of December,” Mole says.
“This is just the beginning chunk of the story that we’re telling. The storyline on this first one is about a guy who’s dying, and he realizes that. It’s kind of a reflection on that and on what it was.”
Following their release show at El Rocko, the band is hitting the road in support of the EP, and then plans to head back home to work on the next installment of their series. Mirror is available now via Bandcamp, but you can stream it below first.
