Album by Curling

14 tracks | 40:32 run time

Releases 03/01/2024

Available on: CD, Cassette, Digital, Streaming

Royal Oakie Records is proud to release No Guitar (Deluxe Edition) on March 1st 2024, which pairs the original album with two instrumental bonus tracks from the No Guitar tracking sessions, “Cavalry” and “C2”, both featuring transitional drummer Kevin Stewart. Mixed & mastered by David Glasebrook (Sugar Candy Mountain, Sandy’s, Credit Electric), the bonus tracks add further depth and stylistic reach to the album, recalling post-rock, slowcore, and power-pop alike.

Curling’s third album No Guitar is their most fully realized work yet, a lush and intricate collection that covers a ton of stylistic ground, from the bittersweet jangle of power-pop, to rustic indie-folk, Midwestern emo, and much more. The album marks the latest evolution for cross-continental duo Bernie Gelman and Joseph Brandel, who first met in high school and have been fusing their own unique musical sensibilities ever since, with Gelman operating out of the San Francisco Bay Area while Brandel currently resides in Japan. 

Work on No Guitar initially began after the band finished touring behind 2018’s Definitely Band, when previous drummer Logan Bean left the group to focus on personal matters. While perusing an online message board, Gelman came across drummer Kynwyn Sterling and reached out to see if she’d be interested in playing together. Pretty soon thereafter Brandel and Gelman decamped to Portland with Sterling and everything started coming together; the newly-formed trio felt their creative juices flowing and wrote four new songs, the beginning of many sessions to come with engineer Ian Pellicci at Brothers Chinese Recording in Oakland, CA.

The album title reflects an initial effort to abandon the six-stringed confines of their previous albums. “It lasted 30 minutes before we picked up some guitars,” Gelman laughs. “We’ve found a middle ground in our tastes. I’m very much a perfectionist, so when I come to our meetings, I’m planning things out in advance, whereas Jojo is a lot more improvisational. There were plenty of moments throughout this record where we put our egos aside to serve the song”. “We’ve actually gotten better at idea-sharing,” Brandel adds, “As we’ve gotten older, we’ve become more comfortable working with each others’ songs.” 

You can hear that dynamic on opening track “Shamble,” which recalls the jangly power-pop of Big Star and Teenage Fanclub, shot through a 21st century lens. You can hear shades of shoegaze in “Hi-Elixir,” where a massive wall of fuzzy guitars recalls My Bloody Valentine; “Patience” has a sweet-and-sour alt-rock bite that recalls legendary acts like Archers of Loaf and Shudder to Think; while “URDoM” swings and sways with a tapestry of guitars that’s reminiscent of emo greats American Football and Mineral.

No Guitar has heavy thematic undertones as well – during the pandemic, Curling effectively went on hiatus for three years. “Coming back together was like pulling teeth,” Gelman recalled. “Jojo hadn’t picked up a guitar in months, and after a certain point we were like, ‘Do we want to be doing this?’” Furthermore, Brandel went through a serious breakup and Gelman’s father also passed away, an absence in his life addressed amidst the acoustic melodies of “Hotel”. “It’s a song about that feeling of grief, as well as the intangible loss of words that you never said,” Gelman explains.