“I’m Just Trying to Love You”: The Debut Single from NYC’s Monobloc
The origin of Monobloc began with two familiar faces in the New York City music scene. The last time I chatted with Michael and Timothy was during a release for their previous band, Courier Club. While we were patiently waiting for more indie rock tunes from the two musicians, little did we know they had been cooking up something behind the scenes. With a desire to create a new project after Courier Club fizzled out, the two worked tirelessly through the past few years to enhance their musical identity alongside skilled producers and musicians they met along the way. Introducing Monobloc, a new band on the scene whose main goal is to deliver timeless rhythms that enchant the listener to dive into a landscape rich in texture.
“I’m Just Trying to Love You” stands as an excellent single to introduce the band to the world. Accompanied with a music video visualizing just what you should expect from a live Monobloc show. Surprising us with the news that they’ll also be releasing a debut EP with 7 songs on the project, Timothy shares, “some of them are a little more experimental than ‘I’m Just Trying to Love You’. I think this song is a great anchor to the project because it just captures a little bit of everything, which is why we were told it would be a good first single. I guess we recorded them all pretty quickly, and we were pretty happy with any of them being the first single so it was just a matter of what order we were going to release them in.”
With a healthy balance between the other members of the band, producers and in-studio writing sessions - it’s clear this strong friendship is emulated through the narrative of their upcoming project. “I think they are all [the EP tracks] are part of a product that has a lot of cohesiveness through it. That I think is something that has been a good growth from where we were at with Courier Club, where before there was a lot more focus on producing individual songs”. “I’m Just Trying to Love You” highlights a strokes-like vocal style highlighted by simple lyricism, grounded by a driving bass line all intertwined by trancing rhythms and guitar loops.
Taking inspiration from Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians”, Monobloc found that this orchestration truly changed everything about how they produced their debut song and upcoming EP. “It’s so different from anything that we made but just in the way that everything comes into play and how everything overlaps. It’s all these very simple things that when played together, creates this artificial texture and artificial depth - and your brain is like ‘oh I’m really falling into something’ but in reality it’s just a single note here and a single note there,” says Monobloc.
Michael and Timothy’s songwriting process has developed a lot from their latest project, in terms of the formula of writing songs and the philosophy behind how they want to do it. The brotherly bond between the two musicians has welcomed them to “both put in what we want into the song and not really be too attached to anything. It’s us learning how to let certain ideas go if it’s not working. We look at it more with the song in a broader perspective as being less attached to a song lets you think more outside of the box with its character.”
While building “I’m Just Trying to Love You” and future songs off the EP, the band was lucky enough to have an array of musical instruments at their disposal allowing them to really test the scale of their experimentation. “There was a violinist and a saxophone player, we had all these tools that we normally don’t have available to us. There was no studio band, just us in a room with ourselves, a bunch of musical toys and really good musicians. You’re not creating anything for someone else’s ego or fulfillment, you're just creating a song and it feels like it’s really ours,” Timothy says in regard to the creative process for “I’m Just Trying to Love You.”
Purposefully built with simple lyrics with a strong conviction, Monobloc highlights that “the lyrics in the song are those that you’ve heard a million times, they’re not like groundbreaking poetry but the idea was to try to really get all the emotional depth from the song through the performance and then keep the written word as simple and as accessible as possible.” Minimalism is far from what to describe Monobloc’s sound but they enhance this aspect through their lyrics as the musicianship itself is what they hope listeners take away from this song.
With intricate, overlapping rhythms balanced with the straightforward ‘tell it how it is’ type lyrics, they really open up a different door than other indie bands on the scene by creating a timeless track that will be accessible through generations. “We listened to a lot of the album Bill Withers Live at Carnegie Hall, and within the second half I was falling in love with the idea of how he was saying the most common, so understood lyrics but in such a way that you just really feel it,” Monobloc says in regard to their songwriting process. In “I’m Just Trying to Love You”, the band is unraveling the beauty in simplicity as they mirror the undertones of what it means to love somebody. It’s a straightforward feeling, where all you’re trying to do is love the person in front of you. Monobloc, using the poetry of simplicity to describe this feeling, combined with the intricate nature of their musical production - invites us to enjoy this intoxicating narrative that will show its relatability in years to come.
Playing a show or two every month since the beginning of summer, Monobloc had a plan for their debut release and its accompanying music video to showcase just how intricate and theatrical their live performances can be. The performance-style music video encapsulates a clear understanding of the band’s digital identity allowing them to naturally grow as they enter a new chapter as Monobloc. “Right, so let’s start with something very simple. Just the band. This is how they move. If you go see them live, it will probably look something like this”, is how the band visualized their debut release. With the performance-like visuals in the music video it allows audiences to clearly see exactly what type of band Monobloc is. There is evidence in how the music moves them, how they stay grounded on the stage, and watch them interact with each other showcasing a healthy balance in their relationship as a band.
Monobloc is breeding sounds with the goal of aging well across years of new music, industry trends, dynamic changes in the digitization of the music economy and live performance rituals. They deliver an ethos of an ability to stand out within a crowded New York scene and do so by taking their current regime and reworking songs in front of an audience into the likes of jazz arrangements. With other friends working as musicians in the music scene, Monobloc often uses changing environments to their advantage to experiment with new sounds and - they completely own it.
