Angelo de Augustine — Lo-fi Folk Rock You’ve Been Missing Out On
by Sonia Gadhia
★
I recently stumbled upon a music video shot on Super 8 at a California beach. There were fuzzy images of sun-glittered waves paired with ethereal, whisper-style vocals against intimate guitars and piano. It was Angelo de Augustine’s latest single ‘Santa Barbara.‘ It sent me into a deep spiral and I’ve since pored over his every release.
Based in the Los Angeles suburb of Thousand Oaks, Angelo has been writing and recording his music at home for the past ten years. This single follows multiple EP’s and three full length albums, the two latest of which were released on Sufjan Stevens’ label, Asthmatic Kitty Records.
Angelo’s preliminary albums - ‘Spirals of Silence’ (2014) and ‘Swim Inside the Moon’ (2017) - are fully home-recorded masterpieces (the latter of which was actually recorded by a 24-year-old Angelo in his bathtub). Reminiscent of Elliott Smith and Nick Drake, both albums are raw, sincere, and overall just really good lo-fi folk rock.
Warm and genuine, but just a bit more polished is his most recent album, ‘Tomb’ (2019). Unsurprisingly, it’s full of delicately captivating tracks, also a fitting description for Angelo’s vocal artistry throughout the record and further attested by his live recorded sessions at Reservoir Studios. If you’re as enamored with Sufjan Stevens’ 2015 record ‘Carrie & Lowell’ as I am, this one’s for you and so is Angelo’s latest single.
Not only does ‘Santa Barbara’ follow true Sufjan form - gloomy lyrics hiding under the prettiest of melodies - but it also features Sufjan himself. It begins, “All my life has been a surprise,” before coming to the unsettling realization, “All my life leads me to die.” Introspective and brooding, yet somehow meditative and uplifting, ‘Santa Barbara’ is the kind of song you fall in love with as soon as it begins.
