Tag: Mike Lee

Letting Up Despite Great Faults Leans Into Fulfillment Over Comfort on Indiepop Shoegaze Single “Powder”

Letting Up Despite Great Faults, photo courtesy the artists

Letting Up Despite Great Faults delivers its follow up to 2022’s entrancing album IV with Reveries with mixing by Melina Duterte (Jay Som) and mastering by Simon Scott (Slowdive). Lead single “Powder” dips a little into the band’s early days with some playful synth sounds like something one might more hear coming from a reprogrammed Famicom and fans of the long defunct The Depreciation Guild will appreciate the vulnerable sounds and delicacy of orchestration in the song’s melodies and rhythms. Guitar notes linger, electronic motes hit with a percussive quality over the rush of spare percussion. The vocals intone like fragments from a diary placed expertly together to comment on the unease of being in a liminal space in one’s life where you think about how people tell you to give up on anything fun and creative in order to “grow up.” But what about what’s in your heart to do and who would want you to give up what brings more than a fleeting shred of joy into your life? The line “You only love the things pinned to the ground” perfectly expresses how some people relate to those they would aim and profess to love—by controlling them and make them into a static entity. A museum piece of life. The song is about resisting that but also the hint of thinking of succumbing to that spirit diminishing but comfortable status yet in the end leaning heavily toward uncertainty in some areas of life over giving it all up for someone that doesn’t truly value your deep happiness. It’s a lot to pack into two minutes twenty seconds with a rare level of emotional and psychological nuance but Mike Lee and the band have a knack for saying meaningful things with great economy in songs that have great forward and outward momentum. Listen to “Powder” Spotify and follow Austin, TX-based Letting Up Despite Great Faults at the links below. Reveries will become available for streaming, download and on vinyl October 11, 2024.

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Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 22: Mike Lee of Letting Up Despite Great Faults

Letting Up Despite Great Faults, photo courtesy the artists

Letting Up Despite Great Faults released its latest album titled IV on March 4, 2022 and marked its first full album in nearly eight years. But for a band that got off to what might be described as a slow start in 2004 in Los Angeles followed by the 2006 release of its first EP Movement (which was reissued on cassette in 2021) the group, lead by singer/guitarist/songwriter Mike Lee, fairly quickly progressed from an early synth pop/proto bedroom pop project to a more shoegaze band by the time of its self-titled 2009 debut and following its move to Austin, Texas at the beginning of 2012 the band has fused the more soundscapey side of its songwriting with the entrancing pop hooks that have always been its hallmark. The new record and its lead single “She Spins” hits your ears right away as one of the great works of guitar pop of the past two decades. Its unconventional melodic lines subvert expected musical tropes of the genre and the intricate guitar interplay recalls the best sides of the Paisley Underground and C86 but with lush production that makes it an easy record to get lost in with a single listen. We had a chance to speak with Lee about his early days as a musician, his development as an artist within the context of Letting Up Despite Great Faults (a name that’s a nod to the Blonde Redhead song “Loved Despite Great Faults”) and the aesthetics of IV from the songwriting to the cover art which Lee, as a graphic artist himself, helped to create.

Listen to our interview with Mike Lee on Bandcamp linked below and catch Letting Up Despite Great Faults performing with Blushing, Old Soul Dies Young and Moodlighting at Lost Lake on Wednesday, April 20, 2022, doors 7, show 8, $12.