Gardens and Villa Live on KCRW – Orange Blossom

Gardens and Villa are behind one of my favorite songs of the year, “Orange Blossom”, and as Anne Litt mentioned today, it’s hard to describe their sound.

With all the synths, it’s easiest to hear the 80’s influence but after seeing them live, you can hear the great outdoors, especially in the bamboo flutes played by singer Chris Lynch (he had a quiver of them on his back, in different keys!).

In fact, they were camping in the woods when they created this music and said they got a lot of inspiration from being outside. Secretly Canadian labelmate Richard Swift produced the album and became a mentor to the young band from Santa Barbara. There is definitely a funk influence and they told us today that my personal favorite, the sensual “Orange Blossom,” came about when they had been listening to Prince’s “Controversy”, which makes total sense!

They say they’ve been given the label “Grave Wave” and seemed pretty fine with it because they all “love pop music but also songs that evoke feelings and more bittersweet melancholy stuff”.

Chris integrated a bit of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” into the first set and I even discovered a new favorite song from their album, “Carrizo Plain”, which we recorded after the broadcast and is available online only!

This is a great session from an up and coming band we expect to hear a lot more from. Check it out.

RR

Gardens and Villa Live on KCRW Set List

Black Hills

Cruise Ship

Thorn Castles

Spacetime

Orange Blossom

Neon Dove

Star Fire Power

Carrizo Plain