<\/strong>Guitars jangle and lurch, drums press forward then pull back, vocals arrive a half-step late or early, as if someone\u2019s letting you in on something they\u2019ve just realized themselves. The music of this six-piece L.A. County band feels loose on purpose, and it\u2019s held together by something intuitive, a shared language that doesn\u2019t need translating.<\/p>\n\n\tDutch Interior\u2019s members have known each other for years, but they tend to shrug off the significance of that biographical footnote. Yes, they\u2019ve been friends since childhood. Yes, that probably explains the trust, sense of play, and seamless detours they take in the studio and up onstage. But Dutch Interior aren\u2019t some happy-go-lucky bunch of pals goofing around \u2014 they\u2019re pushing together toward wider, weirder horizons.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re unified as friends, but we\u2019re also really fucking serious about the art that we\u2019re making,\u201d says Jack Nugent (guitar, vocals), as the band huddles around a pair of tables pushed together in a dim corner of Greenwich Village\u2019s storied Caffe Reggio. They\u2019re an charming and energetic bunch, cracking jokes about our shared Orange County evangelical upbringings (four out of the six members got their start in church worship bands growing up, though they\u2019ve all since \u201cmoved past it pretty heavily\u201d) and the blanket fort they might build in their Bed-Stuy Airbnb later that night, while they\u2019re in town for a sold-out gig at the Brooklyn venue Baby\u2019s All Right. The bandmates piggyback off each other\u2019s thoughts and finish one another\u2019s sentences without any interjection feeling like an interruption. \u201cWe\u2019re not making art because we\u2019re friends,\u201d says Hayden Barton, the band\u2019s drummer. \u201cWe\u2019re friends making art.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tUnsurprisingly, six accounts of how Dutch Interior came together vary by one or two small details, but they unanimously recall the band\u2019s formation as a happy \u201caccident.\u201d Since their teenage years, Nugent, brothers Hayden and Shane Barton (keys, vocals), Conner Reeves (guitar, vocals), Noah Kurtz (guitar, vocals), and Davis Stewart (bass, vocals) have played together in family house garages, joined various bands with one another, and lived together as roommates at different points in time. It wasn\u2019t until Covid, though, that Reeves \u2014 who produces all of Dutch Interior\u2019s music \u2014 showed up with an eight-track to one fortuitous Long Beach apartment hang, and the group recorded an album straight to tape in one week.<\/p>\n\n\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n
\n\t\u201cWe didn\u2019t know a band was forming,\u201d Reeves says. \u201cWe knew we were making a record.\u201d That week-long session became Dutch\u2019s impromptu 2021 debut, Kindergarten.<\/em> Two years later, 2023\u2019s Blinded By Fame<\/em> \u2014 a gorgeously textured lo-fi triumph also recorded on an eight-track in Shane\u2019s garage \u2014 solidified the promise of the band.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\t\u201cI had just gone through the most fucked-up breakup of my life,\u201d remembers Nugent, who was living in his van in Yosemite when Dutch Interior started taking shape. \u201cI was like, is there still a space for me here? Can I come home? I\u2019ll do whatever it takes. I\u2019ll sit in the back and play maraca or whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tMidway through Dutch Interior\u2019s latest and most realized album, Moneyball<\/em>, <\/em>sits a trio of songs that encapsulate the group fairly perfectly: a finger-plucked two-step country ballad adorned with dulcet harmonies (\u201cSweet Time\u201d) gives way to the shoegaze-y, ambient rock of \u201cLife (So Crazy),\u201d which closes on a two-minute long trancey coda that billows forward every time you think it\u2019s about to fade out. Then, a false start, a sharp inhale, and in comes indie rock\u2019s catchiest guitar riff of the year with \u201cFourth Street,\u201d a rapturous ode to home, the unforgiving passage of time, and the corridor apartment where the band planted its roots.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\tMoneyball<\/em> is the first album Dutch Interior has released through a label (Fat Possum Records), as well as the first they recorded in a studio they built themselves, but the inimitable DIY quality of the band\u2019s first records still runs through the meandering tracklist. They say they didn\u2019t even realize they were making an album for a label until it was almost completed. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t supposed to be like, \u2018Oh, this is our label debut, guys,\u2019\u201d says Stewart. \u201cIt\u2019s like, \u2018Fuck it. We\u2019re a third of the way through making the same record we already would have made.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n
\n\tThe band has done its best to stick to the same limitations they faced on those early eight-track recordings, and meticulous about taking only \u201cbaby steps\u201d forward. \u201cIn today\u2019s music, people go from a demo EP to a fully produced studio record,\u201d says Nugent. \u201cWe want a story. We want to progress.\u201d<\/p>\n\n