Golomb hasn’t gone soft on its new EP, Love. But while the trio can still build to a ferocious wall of sound (witness the climax of “Dare You to Cry”), the songs have an increasingly tender core, with singer/guitarist Mickey Shuman delivering lines about needing a sixth sense to accommodate the overwhelming affection he has for his partner, the singer and bassist Xenia Shuman. (The two married early in the writing process for the new release, which the band will celebrate in concert at Cafe Bourbon St. on Thursday, June 27.)
“Xenia keeps telling me I need to write more loud, heavy songs, but they keep getting progressively lighter and softer,” said Mickey, who joined Xenia and drummer Hawken Holm for a mid-June Zoom interview. (The trio will also perform at this weekend’s ComFest, hitting the Bozo stage at 3:45 p.m. on Friday, June 28.)
“I think he’s gone soft,” Xenia said, and laughed. “They get more tender and we can’t be too tender. But I feel like we’re always trying to find our musical voice, and it’s always changing. Mickey texted me earlier today and sent me this Don Cherry song where he was singing a recipe for sweet potato pie or something and he said, ‘We need a song like this.’”
Mickey said that “Dare You to Cry” has a similar origin story, rooted in his efforts to rip off “No Use in Crying” by the Rolling Stones. “And then, all of a sudden, it sort of morphs from what I had in my head to a total new thing,” he continued. “And that’s where our voice and what we’re doing differently comes into play. … It’s so interesting how all that back catalog of what you were ripping off forever ago will sometimes seep through in interesting ways and morph with whatever you’re totally zoning in on now.”
As for Golomb’s developing tender side, Mickey credited its emergence to multiple factors, from his courtship with and subsequent marriage to Xenia – “It’s been a tender, love-filled year,” he said – to a growing understanding that he doesn’t want to wallow in sadness with his songwriting. “Who wants to be sad all the time?” he said. “So, the style change or whatever has been me emphasizing good, positive, almost funny things. I want people to laugh when they hear my lyrics, or at least chuckle. If I’m at a show, I know the band is doing something for me when I laugh, whether it’s intentional or not. … And that’s what I’m more so aiming for. And I think that, in turn, asks for less psycho-noise freakouts and more of those soothing tones.”
These “soothing tones” are most prevalent on hypnotic EP opener “Sixth Sense,” which carries a bit of the Velvet Underground and Spiritualized in its musical DNA. On the track, Xenia and Mickey harmonize together on dreamy verses that conjure images of blue skies dotted with fat white clouds, and which repeatedly give way to noisier guitar outbursts. “Take My Life,” in contrast, is more immediately urgent, opening at a sprinter’s pace and riding Mickey’s loosely fuzzy, nervously pacing guitar and Holm’s relentless drumming. Lyrically, however, the song is as lovelorn as everything that falls before, the tune’s narrator struggling to keep their mind from spinning out while in the presence of the person they’ve chosen to be with. “I can’t keep my thoughts straight with you by my side,” Xenia sings.
Golomb recorded Love at Franklinton’s Secret Studio and then sat on the songs for more than a year as they shopped around for a record label, eventually deciding the best course of action was to self-release. “And I don’t think that changed our view with what we want, necessarily,” said Xenia, who noted the band’s goals for a career in music remain unaltered. “But it changed our view of how we should be going about it, in a way, where we know we need to keep on doing as much ourselves as possible. … From my perspective, I’m not waiting for someone to step in and help now.”
Despite their relatively tender ages, all three members of Golomb have long musical histories. Sister and brother Xenia and Hawken grew up in Columbus with parents David Holm and Melanie Bleveans-Holm, who play together in Bigfoot, and Xenia started her first band, Cherry Chrome, before she could legally drive. (In a 2016 interview, she told me her parents purchased her first instrument, a nylon-string guitar, when she was still in utero.) And Mickey Shuman previously played in Inner Mikey, which formed the summer he turned 17.
Growing up writing and making music has presented its own challenges, with Xenia and Mickey sharing that those more emotionally tumultuous teenage years often presented a more fruitful well from which to draw.
“Coming out of adolescence and into our early 20s and now mid-20s, our lives aren’t as chaotic as they used to be,” Xenia said. “And I know that’s something I’ve struggled with – stepping into this more stable and generally pretty happy life, which can be more challenging to pull from.”
“I think that’s where some of this more tender-y stuff is coming from,” said Mickey, who added that the album cover for Love is a purposeful recreation of the black and white photo that graces the band’s self-titled 2022 debut. “The photo was literally taken on the other side of our basement. … And it’s us pretty much doing the same thing but in full color. And the photo wasn’t intended to be used [as the cover] for this, but I was like, ‘Oh, this is so fitting to the vibe we’re giving off now.’”
