Blue Zero - Colder Shade Blue LP

The Bay Area has long been a fertile landscape for arty DIY rock innovators to fashion together some of the best music to come out of the US- the local musicians pushing the boundaries of pop and counterculture aesthetics. In the middle of this creative oasis you’ll find multi-instrumentalist songwriter Chris Natividad making iridescent waves with his many projects including Marbled Eye, Public Interest, Aluminum, and now- Blue Zero. What started as a few outlier demos cultivated in Chris’ studio has now fully bloomed into a live band featuring members Lauren Melton of SUCKER and Rick Altieri of Blue Ocean, and a forthcoming LP titled Colder Shade Blue. The songs on the record harmoniously tow the line of warm and meditative artrock and fuzzy, damaged grunge a là Lily’s, Sonic Youth, and My Bloody Valentine. While Blue Zero pays homage to their predecessors, the music is wholly unique with its mesmerizing big hooks and blown-out radiating psychedelic atmosphere- a tonal yin yang.

With Blue Zero, Natividad effortlessly escapes the asymmetric and angular guitar stylings of his other projects on Colder Shade Blue. The songs are layered with natural and loose guitar riffs- alternating clean jangle and fried fuzz leads. These guitar parts are intentional and calculated, but never over-played, while the dialed-in and punchy rhythm section paves the way for the memorable vocal melodies and velvety choruses. Songs like “Lemon Year” and “Fortress” are more pop-forward with sugary, head bobbing melodies, while “Scar” and “Gone Again” have a more melancholic, heady quality that pulls you in and under. To say the least, this is an idiosyncratic and diverse rock n roll artifact. The instrumentation was performed solely by Natividad, however the expansive sound of the record was captured by Chris’ longtime friend and collaborator engineer Andrew Oswald resulting in a glowing and powerful wall of sound. Blue Zero’s Colder Shade Blue is an energetic, dynamic and shimmering river of tasteful arrangements and deeply stylized songs that will wash over the listener with continuous, tranquil, and ecstatic reverberation. - Sims Hardin