The Botticellis have an obsession with pop music, melodic songwriting and the cinematic sounds of yesteryear, but they’re not lost in some oldies Neverland. On Old Home Movies, the quintet gives us ten luminous snapshots of sun-bleached memories. The vision is uniquely Californian, and while their music basks in the warmth of the Sunshine State personified by The Beach Boys, it’s also steeped in the shadows and queasy uncertainty of Raymond Chandler.

The Botticellis began when Zack Ehrlich and Alexi Glickman met playing Suzuki violin duets in a southern California kin... (+) expand

The Botticellis have an obsession with pop music, melodic songwriting and the cinematic sounds of yesteryear, but they’re not lost in some oldies Neverland. On Old Home Movies, the quintet gives us ten luminous snapshots of sun-bleached memories. The vision is uniquely Californian, and while their music basks in the warmth of the Sunshine State personified by The Beach Boys, it’s also steeped in the shadows and queasy uncertainty of Raymond Chandler.

The Botticellis began when Zack Ehrlich and Alexi Glickman met playing Suzuki violin duets in a southern California kindergarten class. They started writing songs together in grammar school and continued playing in bands together in high school and college. While studying music at UC Santa Cruz, they met lo-fi auteur, Burton Li, who helped produce an early album for the duo. Li soon joined the band and under the influence of his analogue obsessions, the three moved further up the California coast to San Francisco. Not long after, lyricist Blythe Foster and bass player Ian Nansen were pulled into the fold. The ensemble now lives communally in San Francisco’s foggy Outer Richmond district, where they’ve been working on Old Home Movies for the past four years, refining their muzzy, slightly drugged out, psychedelic sound. The Botticellis’ debut promises to bring burnished, finely crafted pop to the people, filling the heads of their audience with vibrant memories and California day dreams.

The Botticellis have toured and/or shared bills with Mates of State, Asobi Seksu, Au Revoir Simone, Grizzly Bear, Feist, John Vanderslice, Viva Voce, Cake, Two Gallants and many others… (-) collapse