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Now Hear This: Corvair | Corvair

The Portland duo drop a debut disc of endearingly scrappy indie-rock & power-pop.

THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE:Corvair are a Portland, Oregon band comprised of Brian Naubert and Heather Larimer. Their debut album was largely created during the COVID pandemic shutdown of spring 2020. It includes work with drummer Eric Eagle (Jesse Sykes, Wayne Horvitz) and engineer Martin Feveyear (Brandi Carlile, Mark Lanegan, Mudhoney), who also mixed the record.

Larimer describes the process: “Being stuck in a house together with very little outside influence made us more emotionally raw, definitely weirder, and also more patient and intricate in developing the songs. And because we were in a bubble, cooking dinner from paranoidly disinfected groceries and listening to old records, really disparate references from some of our favorite music ended up colliding — an emotional Judas Priest bridge, an anthemic Pixies outro, a spacey keyboard sound from Steve Miller, Jeff Lynne’s acoustic guitar tone, a Carpenters-style lush harmony. I think it’s a wonderfully weird record, but also very in-your-face pop because what else are you going to do when the world feels like it’s ending?”

Brian and Heather have both been making music for a very long time. Combined, they have recorded or performed on more than 20 albums. Heather’s musical mainstay was the garage pop band Eux Autres, broadly hailed as a “veritable cult classic” band. They toured the US and Europe several times; were radio-debuted by John Peel on BBC Radio One; and were featured in movies, commercials, and TV shows. Before that, Heather was the all-time least popular member of Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, and she has been a featured vocalist on albums by several artists, including Malkmus, The Minus Five, The Village Green, My Diet Pill and more.

Brian is a longtime fixture of the Northwest rock community, having played in vital bands such as Tube Top, Pop Sickle, The Service Providers and Ruston Mire since 1993. Praise for the work of Ruston Mire, Naubert’s primary songwriting vehicle, ranges from “essential Northwest rock” to “landmine guitar hate-rock meets Floydian conceptualism” to “a modern classic.” More recently, Brian released his first solo record Hoffabus and a record with the NW supergroup The Service Providers (featuring members of Posies, Fastbacks and Sushi Robo). Fun facts: Brian’s father was the bass player for the seminal Northwest garage rockers The Galaxies, and Brian shared a bill with Nirvana at their first-ever stage show.

Brian and Heather have composed original music for brands, ad agencies and films. Recently, they wrote a We Are The World-style cheeseball anthem for the Portland, Oregon philanthropic project known as SauceAid, a spicy coalition of saucemakers helping stop food insecurity for restaurant workers in the wake of COVID.”

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