Mary Jane Dunphe is a poet and musician who tells stories–not through direct narrative but through embodied presence and performance, through cinematic and fragmented memory, the wild transmission of feeling. Her versatile songwriting has garnered critical acclaim in past projects such as the visceral punk of Vexx and Gen Pop, the minimal dream pop of CCFX and CC Dust, and the lonesome country-rock of The County Liners–and now Dunphe’s debut solo album, Stage of Love, is the start of a captivating new chapter.
The process of making Stage of Love began in 2019 at FEAL Studios in Brooklyn. At first the pace was slow, as Dunphe set out to define the sound of her solo project, but her self-assurance grew with each new song. “I think I was feeling tired of relying on bandmates’ consistent engagement and was also feeling more confident in my ability to write on my own, and was curious to discover what kind of sounds I would make,” she explains. “I think the kind of music you make is partially intentional and partially something that’s innate and you can’t control it. If you believe this then you can relax into listening to yourself rather than forcing some hyper-specific sound.”
The songs began to progress, influenced in part by the wide range of music Dunphe was enjoying in solitude–Robert Wyatt, Section 25, Tones on Tail, Harold Budd, Operating Theater, Bowie, Prince, Bjork, The Blackbyrds, Marvin Gaye, and Gloria Ann Davis – music that she describes as “both maximal and sincere,” a quality that she sought to capture on Stage of Love. Recording continued in 2021 in Los Angeles with longtime friend Todd Berndt (The Berries) along with Jimmy Dixon (The Berries, Local Natives) at Kingsize Studio, and was finally completed in 2022 with Ben Greenberg (Uniform, The Men), before being mastered by Heba Kadry (Björk, Slowdive, Beach House). “I think it’s kind of antiquated to try and make an album like I did,” Dunphe says. “To spend all my money trying to write in the studio, to take years to do so, to slow cook it. We live in a very anti-masterpiece culture today–I’m not saying that this is a masterpiece at all, it’s more a document of me getting to know myself on a creative level, but it’s an attempt at it, there’s an ambition in it stemming from my adoration for the heroes of music’s days of yore.”
That ambition–the all-encompassing desire to make something truly great–is palpable throughout Stage of Love, and upon listening it’s clear that Dunphe’s patience and commitment in the studio has paid off. The resulting album is an idiosyncratic assemblage of pulsating drum machines, shimmering synths and guitars, and Dunphe’s singular soaring voice–all coalescing into highly danceable avant-pop songs. Sequenced as a long walk alone that starts at midnight and ends at 5:00 am with the birds chirping, the album’s ten tracks are full of longing but also questioning. What do you do at night that you can’t do during the day? When at night you plead, who do you plead to? What don’t you have, yet still you give away, tirelessly? “It’s me ruminating on desire and its stickiness,” Dunphe says. “It’s me feeling so alone and simultaneously celebrating it and damning myself for it. It’s the freedom and the prison of living a life in solitude which is how I have felt the past three years for sure. It’s dreams too, and sleep demons, and open fields, and meaningful pauses.”
The songs tremble with the contradictions of human emotion–want and detachment, tension and relief, connection and escape, power and powerlessness–all reverberating together in Dunphe’s otherworldly version of pop. The album opening title track sets the mood with an effects-drenched bass line and thumping beat that build into a euphoric chorus. The track encapsulates many of the album’s themes, Dunphe explains: “It’s about longing and trying to understand the difference between desiring love and just desiring. It’s about the pleasure and the suffering of the lack, and breathing into it.”
The motif of breathing reappears in other songs like the hooky, “Always Gonna Be The Same”, which draws on a period of physical and emotional pain–specifically, an emergency dental surgery. “While I was in surgery the dental surgeon shouted at me, ‘Open up your eyes, you are in control!’” Dunphe recalls. “I was panicking and choking and they couldn’t numb me because my tissue wouldn’t take it. It was gruesome but a wake up call–the idea of breathing into things that were causing me extreme pain.” The song crests into a triumphant refrain to match the mental recontextualization in Dunphe’s lyrics. “Giving up actually can be a victorious act. I don’t have to hold onto the pain in order to honor my journey, I can release it and everything else that doesn’t serve my growth, without a grudge. It’s about forgiving yourself for getting hurt.”
Tracks like “Phantom Heart” and “Moon Halo” highlight Dunphe’s ability to bridge dreamy atmosphere with expert songcraft, while elsewhere a cover of Roland S. Howard’s “I Know A Girl Called Johnny” fits right in with her own lyrical observations of devotion and desire. On album-standout “Longing Loud” Dunphe paints a gentle fantasy of being read to in bed by someone you love. “It’s about someone who inspired me to be a better version of myself just from a chance meeting,” she says. “This sort of reaching that you feel inside yourself when someone wakes you up to the feeling that maybe you deserve it—’it’ being everything.”
Stage of Love begins to come to a close with “Starless Night,” a haunting piece that forgoes the widescreen synths for scattered, discordant notes. The song’s sparse arrangement feels loose and exposed compared to the tight drum machine heartbeat of much of the record, leaving the floor open for Dunphe to unleash the full power of her voice. It’s a striking moment, and as it fades into the chirping morning birds of “Saint Dymphna” it feels like some kind of freedom has been achieved in the release–even if there’s no answers yet, there’s always the next night.
Liam Benzvi knows New York City better than most: the New York native came of age in the city, where he attended Laguardia High School. His music imbues the white-hot effervescence that comes from growing up a New Yorker; channeling encounters with those you might never see again or meeting the one person who can change your life. Benzvi has been part of the New York music scene since his days in of-the-moment indie pop outfit Strange Names, but over the years has leaned further into his pop star sensibilities by collaborating with the likes of Dev Hynes & Porches and opening dates with Harry Styles.
…And His Splash Band, Benzvi’s debut for Fat Possum, sees Benzvi fully embrace the role of pop provocateur. Born out of a book he owned with a bunch of covers of glam rock/proto punk bands from 1970s Europe, he imagines the thrill of having a one hit wonder and, in a more modern premise, being an industry plant. Benzvi has a knack for romanticizing everything, even misfortune: “the novelty of a band is so precious and hard to achieve in NYC financially.” Why not buy into that fantasy?
Benzvi began work on …And His Splash Band in the summer of 2022. He recorded the majority of the record in Nick Weiss (Nightfeelings)’ studio situated above a sex shop on Santa Monica Boulevard and put the final touches on vocal features at a studio beneath the restaurant Indochine in Soho.. And His Splash Band embodies the frenetic buzz of both cities, and frizzes with the potential of meeting anyone, anytime. This includes the collection of characters whom Benzvi sourced to comprise “The Splash Band”: friends and acquaintances with no prior musical experience but equipped with the wide-eyed insouciance that comes with being young and beautiful. Liam initially filmed himself playing all the parts on the record, tediously sending the rest of the band videos of every little thing. They spent hours doing improv building their separate characters into something fully realized.
Dalgo, a semiretired local hustler, took up music when a longtime client, a lonely widow, was short on cash and settled up by gifting him her dead husband’s vintage guitar. Silas, the group’s oblivion-attuned thereminist and programmer, came into his abilities suddenly, after awakening from an alien abduction, an experience that he likens to learning a language in your sleep. Jet, the Splash Band’s bassist, arrived in New York as an orphan from a war-wrecked post-Soviet nation, with extremely limited documentation and all his traditional values intact. “It had something to do with borders,” Jet attests, dryly. He’s such a flirt! “Silas brings the brains,” says Benzvi, “Dalgo brings the body. Jet brings the Balkans and the brawn.”
Benzvi has always attracted people to him, and …And His Splash Band highlights his ever-widening circle of creatives, with features from the likes of Ren G of Club Eat, Lecx Stacy, SSION, Aaron Maine of Porches, and Devonté Hynes of Blood Orange. Even though …And His Splash Band dwells on the push and pull of romantic encounters, it’s also shaped by the comradery of shared experience that comes with coexisting together, and how your interactions with others shape your own identity. It’s about building a life where you have someone to call in the middle of the night, and taking charge of your own agency. You’re not getting anywhere without an outsize belief in yourself.
The record is alight with bursts of serotonin: from the magnetic freewheeling synth pop of openers “Take Care of Me” and “Dust” to the soulful bounce of Hynes-assisted “Other Guys” and more downtempo balladry of “2N4”, the music never loses its sparkle. …And His Splash Band capitalizes on the thrill of it, even as it becomes more delirious (“Breakdown”). Benzvi has often spoken about the “emotional coordinates” of his music, perfectly capturing that blip of adrenaline, the sweet spot that sweeps you off your feet. In a day and age where being an artist is just as much about style as about substance, he’s keen to play the game, on his terms. He sounds like a genuine star.
Ivy 2 makes music for the club, except the club is a small room full of the 25 to 50 coolest and most tender people you know. On Less Precious, the Philly-based musician’s debut album, she works in the same vein as on her thwacking, surreal, homespun 2023 single “Domino” while striving for emotional and spiritual connection.
Throughout fall 2022, Ivy 2 wrote Less Precious on synths and her computer (she’s previously played guitar in rock bands), but the songs felt only 90% complete until she realized something big: Only sometimes is solitude the right move. “I really didn’t want to ask for help,” she says. “I’ve always had this fantasy of doing it all myself.” When she called in Jeff Zeigler for some final mixing and production touches, she realized how much community matters. “The more I continue to open up and collaborate with people,” she says, “[The more] I see the fruits of that vulnerability.”
As Less Precious progresses, Ivy 2 lets down her guard and invites listeners in. The album begins with the abrasive, minimal dancefloor instrumental “Necklace” and gradually transitions into longing and pensive, yet still propulsive, electronic songs (“Sunderground,” “Dream Voice”). It’s a 25-minute act of putting up barbed wire around oneself only to lovingly tear it down.
“Why is it so hard to tell you just what’s on my mind?” Ivy 2 asks on Less Precious’ stunning emotional centerpiece “Running,” a four-on-the-floor dream-pop song that’s equal parts Aphex Twin and The Postal Service. Over the album’s runtime, she clears this emotional hurdle: In flowing from guarded and tense to welcoming and at ease, Ivy 2 shares her fullest self.
