Golomb brings the good vibes with ‘The Beat Goes On’

The bulk of the songs on Golomb’s forthcoming record, The Beat Goes On (No Quarter), began to emerge a few years back, taking shape at a point in time that singer/guitarist Mickey Shuman described as “intense, for many different reasons.”

Coming out of the early years of the pandemic, the musician noticed how interactions between people increasingly tended to be tinged with anger, frustration, or indifference – a collective fraying, of sorts, that runs counter to his more genial, easygoing nature. As one example, he and his partner, Golomb bassist/singer Xenia Shuman, recalled a trip they took to the dog park where they witnessed a man slip and fall in the mud as the people around him watched and did nothing.

“And all of these people were just standing around, so we walked over, like, ‘Are you okay?’” said Xenia.

The scene led directly to album track “Other Side of the Earth,” a loping reggae number that opens with Mickey recalling how dispirited he felt in that moment, singing, “Nobody gonna bat an eye, when a stranger gets hurt.”

Similar ideas percolate throughout, this want for connection and community echoing most cleanly in songs such as “Play Music,” a loosely jangly roots-rock tune on which Mickey sings of his desire to “play music that gives you a part of me,” and the percolating, hypnotic “Be Here Now,” which centers on the idea that the best counter to this sometimes cruel, chaotic modern era is to perhaps focus on making your small corner of the universe a little bit kinder.

Of course, Mickey didn’t recognize these themes developing in the moment, taking notice only once he gained some distance from the writing and recording.

“When we finally got all of these songs together, I was like, oh, all of these songs are kind of about the same thing, or variations on a theme,” said Mickey, who will join Xenia and her drummer brother, Hawken Holm, for an album listening party at Spoonful Records on Sunday, July 20, and later for an album release show at Ace of Cups on August 15. “I guess they’re all kind of about connection, which is something I never thought about that until I saw them all together and was like, well, this makes a lot of sense.”

“They’re about the state of the world and being genuine and kind to one another through the chaos,” Xenia said. “And maybe not in that big picture way.”

“Yeah, it’s a very intimate reaction to everyone breaking down in response to what’s going on in the world,” Mickey said. “And maybe instead of people reacting how they react – sending out stuff on the internet or yelling at people who think differently – maybe a more inward approach would be a worthwhile endeavor for some people. … Making sure you feel good before trying to take care of gigantic, enormous problems seems like a pretty good first step to me, whether that’s being in love or playing music or getting stoned.”

Being in Golomb, then, can at times encompass all of these pursuits, the songs generally taking shape with the three bandmates jamming together in a room, circling around a riff or a musical idea until it clicks into place – an experience Xenia described as transportive. “It’s really spectacular, and it’s the best feeling when you look around and realize everyone is fully in the zone, and that you’re fully in the zone, and you’re also with your family,” she said. “I feel like that sometimes when we play shows, where the three of us enter our own space and we’re locked together in this really specific way that I haven’t necessarily experienced before.”

These transportive moments exist throughout The Beat Goes On, recorded at Musicol alongside producer Keith Hanlon and due for release on July 25, surfacing in the way the Shumans harmonize together on the tightly coiled “Dog,” the turbulent oceans of guitar that froth up as the pair sing about crashing waves on “Staring,” and in the menacing riff that snakes its way through the euphoric “Real Power,” which has shades of Lou Reed embedded in its DNA. 

Though rooted in good vibes that Mickey said emerged as a response to the toxic cultural zeitgeist of this social and political era, there are occasional moments where the musicians let cracks to show, most explicitly on “The Sad Song,” an aptly titled slow burner on which Mickey allows his internal monologue to bleed outward. “Don’t know which way to go,” he sings. “Follow my heart, follow my head, or take my last breath.”

“I feel like I tend to keep things to myself when it comes to those kinds of emotions,” Mickey said. “But it’s unrealistic to feel good all of the time. You’re going to feel like shit eventually, whether you’re thinking about politics all the time, or getting stoned all the time, or getting it on all the time. … That song is [surfacing] the thoughts you have where you’re like, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t say that, probably, to the people around me.’”

“Because then your wife will be worried once you show her the song,” Xenia interjected, and laughed. 

When I spoke with Golomb last year in the weeks before the release of their 2024 EP, Love, the bandmates spoke about taking a more hands-on approach to building a career in music, ill-content to wait on a record label to deliver material support. “I’m not waiting for someone to step in and help,” Xenia said at the time. 

A year later, this landscape has shifted dramatically. The band is now signed to a label, No Quarter, and is braced to dedicate a good chunk of the remaining year to touring in support of its new album, which currently has the musicians focused on mundane details such as who is going to take care of the cats when they’re out of town.

“It’s like all of this real-life stuff now has to be shifted around so we can go out and do this other real-life stuff,” Xenia said, “which at the same time is also kind of this fantasyland.”