Suburban Living

By Ellie Kahn I first heard Suburban Living’s song “Video Love” off the band’s Always Eyes EP, to be precise, in the background of a video interview with Kat Dennings for Nylon magazine. The sound was fresh and far-away, and one that I often look for in today’s music scene, and I knew it would be all that would come out of my headphones for the next week. And the week after.The problem is, the band’s repertoire is composed only of an EP, a mini-EP, and a single — which is around nine songs — so it’s like a television show that’s only released part of a season, leaving you shaking and suffering a withdrawal that can only be cured with more (or a double shot of espresso).[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/75259598" params="color=ff6600&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]Mr. Wesley Bunch of Virginia Beach is the lone man behind the sound, one that he’s played around with since he was 14 but didn’t officially call Suburban Living until 2010.He does everything — the writing, the vocals, the mixing, the drum machine-operating. Bunch admitted in an interview with Prefix Magazine that he’s no good at drumming, so he used a machine to lay down the tracks for his EP.But it doesn’t matter. Instead of sophisticated riffs and verses and bridges, he offers stuff that’s expertly synthy and distant, just how we like it.Suburban Living’s music has been categorized by bloggers and critics as “dream pop,” which I see as synonymous with music that’s easy to drown out your surroundings with when studying.Listen to the Always Eyes EP a few times through, and Starbucks will become a grassy pasture with expansive willow trees. Spin the EP Cooper’s Dream for an evening, and the library stacks will become a rooftop overlooking a metropolitan city.It’s trance music, reminiscent of pros like Beach House and the xx, that seems more like overlapping sounds buried under layers and layers of each other than just songs.We get about 26 percent of the lyrics most of the time, and the rest is just there, floating around in Wesley Bunch’s personal stratosphere.However, Bunch knows how to write a melody. The unsigned band’s top hit (if you could call it that) “I Don’t Fit In” delivers a chorus that has chant-at-a-concert potential and boasts a pop format we can all recognize.[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/51509425" params="color=ff6600&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]Bunch isn’t doing anything alarming or stinging with his music, but with winning songs like “Give Up” that feel modern yet also reminiscent of another era, he gets us to close our eyes and take a break from all things college.What’s great about Suburban Living’s collection of tracks is that it’s musically-accessible to the most devout of hipsters — and also to the most suburban of suburbanites. And that’s the point of this stuff. Bunch’s intent is to express through his music what it’s like to live in the suburbs, but also give you a means through which to escape it.So take it, if you need it.Photo by Kelsie McNair