Moxy The Band on Their Debut Album 'Dream Feeling'
Taking us into the future by reinventing the past is Moxy The Band. Through the manipulation of nostalgic synths and clever innovation of rock and pop, the band gives us a “80s vision of the future.” This can be experienced in their debut album Dream Feeling, released on November 11th. By submerging ourselves in the eleven track project, we are delivered a euphoric vision of life unfolding, bursting with cathartic emotion and tribulation.
Based in Sacramento, California, Moxy is composed of Amber DeLaRosa, Dryw Owens, and Michael Franzino. Each member of the trio comes from different backgrounds of their craft, creating an extensive array of talent felt through Moxy’s music. Their creation of Dream Feeling is one of a kind. Before Amber joined as the vocal factor, Dryw and Michael had been working together instrumentally in creating the landscape of the album. When implementing vocals, Amber described it as “stepping into this world that was already built.” The band asserts that moving forward, their creative process will look different as the formation of Dream Feeling was entirely unique.
Prior to the debut, the band had released three singles from the album including “The Cost” and “Pawns.” The final single, “The Feeling of Letting Go,” is an explosive dance track, truly reigning in the quintessential feel of 80s pop ballads. With boundless synths and echoing vocals, the song emulates a striking encounter with freedom of self, a collision of contagious movement.
The album explores heavier sounds as well, like with the haunting track “Forever Endeavor.” Combining Amber’s yearning vocals with energetic, restless guitar, it navigates a labyrinth of experiences and revolving doors.
Dream Feeling is a must listen, an essential album to take away from 2022 moving forward. In a conversation with Unpublished, Moxy The Band dove deep into the nuances of their creation, exploring different aspects of their artistic growth and processes within fabricating their world. Read on to hear more.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Can you guys describe your sound to me for listeners who haven’t heard it before?
[MICHAEL]: I think where we’re at with that is 80s vision of the future, however that is interpreted.
[DRYW]: Probably like some cross between like 80s nouveau, electronic pop, with a little bit of rock in there as well.
[AMBER]: Yeah, at the same time I definitely have a lot of roots in indie, singer-songwriter. I feel like in general, it's kind of an amalgamation of a lot of our different backgrounds. I'm excited for listeners to hear the album and tell us what they think it sounds like because I don't think we fully know.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Can I get some background on when and how you guys formed Moxy The Band?
[MICHAEL]: It kind of started after the ending of my previous band A Lot Like Birds. In the wake of that I had a bunch of music I had been writing that I wasn't sure what to do with and I brought the songs to Dryw, like 40 songs. They were all different kinds of genres and styles and just kind of a mess. He kind of helped me narrow it down into the sound we ultimately achieved. Then we ended up bringing Amber on and she kind of glued it all together with her vocals and melodies and lyrics.
[AMBER]: Definitely around the time that they brought me on there was a lot going on in each of our lives and also just in the world in general. So that was kind of like, I feel like a cataclysmic start to Moxy The Band, when I look back on it.
[DRYW]: Like a lot of people, we started this thing and then the pandemic happened. You know, everybody kind of had to control their company. So it was like we kind of had this little family of us working together and probably not seeing a ton of other people during that time. So I think a lot of artists kind of have that story too.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You guys are releasing a new single, “The Feeling of Letting Go.” What was the inspiration behind it?
[AMBER]: So the boys put this together musically before I came on to add lyrics and melody and there was something about it that just felt super nostalgic to me about a certain time in my childhood, just got me super reflective. And then the visual that we're putting out with it is pretty funny. In a funny way it sort of reminded me of when I was younger and listening to or watching my mom put on her 80s Jazzercise videos and just like putting my ear to the speaker and just thinking about love and writing love songs, and just imagining myself in the future writing these kind of 80s disco-esque songs. And here I was presented with this song that they had composed that was kind of like a dream actualized. I didn't realize this was a song I've been waiting to write since I was little. It was like, "Yeah, finally." So, it was just cool to let my brain go loose in that landscape. The album as a whole kind of wrestles with a lot of themes at the same time; intimacy being a big one of them and kind of dissociating, letting go. So this song is kind of asking you, "are you going to show up? Are you going to be here? Are we going to connect? Or are you just kind of gonna let yourself go into oblivion?" And I think that speaks to our album as a whole as well. I'm here to do this. Are we gonna just fade into oblivion? And I think a lot of people are kind of wondering that right now at this point in time in life as well.
[DRYW]: This was one where Michael sort of originated this idea for what instrumentally was the corus and then a verse leading up to that. I think for a lot of the album it was sort of a basis for a song and then Michael and I were just throwing things at the wall and seeing what stuck. And that's kind of what happened with this song, like trying to write around sort of the good basis that Michael had. I remember I just picked up an acoustic guitar and a banjo, and some keys, and we were just adding, like stacking these arpeggios. That became the basis for the intro, you can hear these little elements, like the acoustic guitar and the banjo back there plucking away and then this sort of punchy bass line that just comes out of nowhere and brings the song in before the vocals hit. That's kind of how I remember it.
[MICHAEL]: I thought the interesting thing about this song was that it almost didn't happen. We had already kind of decided on the 10 songs we were going to release as the full length. And in the process, I was just farting around and came up with an idea and Dryw and I entertained it for a second and liked what we were coming up with. But, we didn't have enough time to finish the song for a good portion of the process. And kind of just like the last week we have for writing, Dryw just pulled out the second half of the song essentially. And yeah, it kind of saved it and revived it as a legitimate song that we actually put out.
[UNPUBLISHED]: As a trio, what does your creative process look like?
[MICHAEL]: More or less for, I think eight of the songs, the idea started as a shell of an idea of a verse and a chorus that I have thought of in this huge writing phase. It started as that and I took it to Dryw and he took it to what it is that you hear. And then there's a couple, including "The Cost," our first single, that started as a Dryw idea entirely and I just contributed a little bit. Then there's like one or two that are pretty much 50/50 collaborative that we wrote together in the studio. Then we kind of wrote the songs not knowing what we're going to do about vocals, it was just a free exploration. And once we took on Amber, she took it to its own direction and finalized it.
[AMBER]: Writing lyrics is a process in itself, just like composing and engineering the song is a process in itself. But for me, lyrically, it's just a very emotional process. So the process was just life happening so hard at the time of the album and there was so much life to process at that time. I think at the time, I thought that it stood in the way of the writing process and in the way of the lyrics. Retrospectively, I can see that it was the writing process, it was the lyrics. Right at the time that they took me on I developed epilepsy, started experiencing my first grand mals and daily seizures that were growing in severity. Around that time was also the pandemic. There was also a lot of loss in my life at that time. And yeah, it was just crazy. So, a lot of these songs are just grappling with all of those things that are happening. Dryw kind of described it before, the songs were just being written in real time. Even though they took so long to come out, they're just very accurate snapshots of where lyrically my emotional and mental headspace was at that time. Which was a lot of reckoning, a lot of grief and a lot of trying to pull myself through the other side. I had never written songs like this before, this was completely backwards for me. I always would write songs around lyric ideas first. For me, it was always like the lyrics inspired the music, not this other way around where the whole musical landscape was already more or less there. They would go on to tweak it and change it a lot and get it to match with my voice but I basically had to write by stepping into this world that was already built. That was super strange for me. So I had to write in keys that I wasn't used to singing and write time signatures that I had never even thought to have my brain write to. And just understand things about songs compositionally that sonically I never had understood before. So each of these songs had so many writing passes to them, which was crazy for me. Like, I've probably written at least 12 different versions of lyrics or stories or experiences to each of these songs to get where they where they're at. That's super unlike me. Typically, I'm not a redrafter, I like to go with the lyrics that come straight from my heart. So, this was a really interesting process. It took a lot of me taking myself to overlooks and just crying at the wall and just having a lot of life experiences. And yeah, just a lot of really intense, cathartic experiences to end up with the lyrics that are there now.
[DRYW]: In terms of process, this album was a whole lot of process. But it's definitely a one of a kind process for us. Like, we can only make one of this kind of record doing it the way that we did, because the way that we did it was almost like a real time formation story. You know, the record was being written as the band was being formed. We were building the studio that I'm in right now while the whole thing was coming together. So it's probably gonna be a lot different going forward and writing new music. But yeah, the album definitely represents sort of finding this group together and it became the album that is Dream Feeling.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Do you guys have a favorite song off the album that you are excited for people to hear?
[AMBER]: My favorites keep changing. For me personally, "Pawns." It was probably my favorite off the album. But I'm really stoked about the song we're putting out tomorrow, "The Feeling of Letting Go." Right now that's just kind of my favorite song to dance to even though so much behind the lyrics are experiences I never thought I'd be dancing to. The song just makes me dance and shake out my shoulders and I love it. Oh man, can I just say every song? There are a few songs on the album that I'm just excited for people to dig into and get to know a little more. I think the kind of like sneaker on the album that I really want people to listen to is "Overgrown." The feel of that song and the way that we enter into it is just more of the world I want to step into musically.
[MICHAEL]: I think my personal favorite might have been "The Cost," but that's already out. I think "You Feel It Too." We almost picked it as a single but we had kind of already had two more moody, darker songs as singles. So, we alternately wanted to just put a bop for our closing single.
[DRYW]: Yeah, I really do like "The Cost." That one does something for me emotionally, but that one's already out. We really worked hard to make an album with no skips. "Overgrown" is really good. There's something really special about the closing track, "Guidance Counselor." It just makes me feel like I'm in a sci-fi film. We even took some inspiration from a vocal effect on Dune. I just feel like putting on a spacesuit whenever I listen to that. I feel like I'm in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It really puts me in a cinematic kind of place. So, that one's really cool. And yeah I like "Overgrown" a lot too.
[UNPUBLISHED]: I wanted to ask about the album art? What was the vision behind this?
[MICHAEL]: I think the thing that we went for overall, aesthetically, was the thing I said at the beginning about the 80s vision of the future. Another big portion of the record was Amber developing epilepsy. You know, a lot of this was like a science experiment in many ways, but also an experiment of figuring out how she can get these performances while dealing with this new chronic illness. We were trying everything we could think of from getting oxygen cans to anything we could to help her be more comfortable and feel less sick. So yeah, it has this science experiment vibe for the cover. It was kind of a science experiment, in general compositionally of just figuring out what our format is, figuring out what our sound is, trying everything possible, to get what we felt was the best we could do.
[DRYW]: That brought back a lot of memories with the oxygen tanks and when Amber was singing in the live room. There are a lot of times where we would be in the middle of vocal takes and a seizure would come on. That was definitely a much different process than I've ever experienced before working on vocals. The epilepsy part was a big unknown and a variable that became a part of our process.
[AMBER]: Yeah, super rough part of it. But, glad we overcame together and in a weird way the album art encapsulates that for me. Definitely, at that time in my life, at least in the hospital that I was going to, I kind of felt like this weird guinea pig even within myself. I had recorded prior to ever having had seizures, so it was an incredibly different experience for me. I no longer knew my limits. Thankfully, these two stood by me. There's a line between encouraging you to put out your all and also knowing what your physical limits are, especially when you have a severe condition. These two stayed by my side to very much believe in me when they knew I had it in me and very much be there when it was time to lay down and turn the lights off and drink water and call it a day and be proud with the work that we got done that day. Even if it was extremely difficult. I think that was incredibly new waters for them as well. So yeah, I think the album artwork puts that all across in a really cool and interesting way, even if just to us. We worked with a really awesome photographer for that album as well, Raul Gonzo. Even taking that album art, even taking that photo was really hard. I was having tons of seizures that day in that tube if you guys remember because there were shining lights on me and I was struggling so hard not to seize through that whole shoot.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Is there a certain song that you guys are excited to perform live?
[AMBER]: For me "The Feeling of Letting Go," because we're releasing it tomorrow. It's just so fun to sing and play and dance around to and I'm just excited for that one to be out. I think people are gonna really like it, I hope so. I don't think I've ever put out a song like this before.
[MICHAEL]: For me, I feel like "The Cost" comes off really powerfully live.
[DRYW]: That's also my answer, "The Cost" is really gratifying to play for me.
[AMBER]: And every song is very difficult to sing. We've also made everything as difficult as it could possibly be to play or sing.
[DRYW]: Yeah, that's the dark side of throwing a kitchen sink at the album. There was definitely a time after the album was done that we were like, "Oh my God, how the hell are we going to play this? What are we going to do?" We had to get really creative.
[AMBER]: And we are doing it. Like it's not just a ton of backtracks or split up. Once again, we were throwing the kitchen sink.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You guys combine these 80s synths with this futuristic sense of pop and rock. What are some artists that have inspired you?
[MICHAEL]: I feel like Radiohead is kind of a staple and influence forever. Just like the way they incorporate synths in a sort of artistic rock format. Some others, I think that we're referencing a lot aren't even necessarily 80s. There are some artists that are current, that are taking inspiration from the 80s, like Com Truise that we referenced a lot in synth tones, in general composition.
[DRYW]: There definitely were some older influences from sort of the era of music that apparently inspires what we're doing. There were a few times that I went back and checked out some Michael Bolton, like "When a Man Loves a Woman" to try to figure out what those sparkly kind of vintage sounding keys and try to emulate some of that. But just like a lot of contemporaries do. Michael and I are big fans of the band called Polyenso and they're still very active. And Michael turned me on to this artist Noah Gundersen, I became a big fan of his.
[AMBER]: I've watched them be drawn more to like noises and effects, wondering how they capture a certain noise. But again, this is kind of our 80s vision of the future. So what would we have done back in the 80s if we had access to these instruments and these noises and sounds and ideas? And then for myself, vocally and as a songwriter, I'm inspired mostly by female artists. Not really on purpose or anything like that. Definitely they had me get into my inner Whitney for this album. I definitely grew up on Christina Aguilera, like that's just deep in my heart. But also raised on The Cranberries and Alanis Morissette and Stevie Nicks. And again, more contemporary songwriters like Julia Michaels and Lennon Stella. And then early on Avril Lavigne, which I feel like even can make its way into some of our heavier stuff. So, I feel like there's just a lot of contemporary pop or rock or just all those different things set up kind of made us decide like what's the music of our dreams? What can we explore? Yeah, this is my Christina Aguilera era.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Your album comes out on 11/11, a date associated with wishes. What are some wishes you have for the future of Moxy The Band?
[MICHAEL]: I think I've had the same wish since I was a kid with music, which is just simply for me to be at a point in my career where all I have to do is music and the music funds being able to do that. So, if I just had a wish for our career, it would just be that it affords us the ability to just keep making it.
[AMBER]: I just wish that this band and this project gets us closer and closer to feeling musically and artistically fulfilled. I hope it can bring us all a better quality of life and I hope that it can keep continuing to give me something to believe in. Hopefully other people that are connecting with these songs and connecting with the things that we're going through as people, that it gives them something to believe in and root for too. Ultimately, those are my biggest wishes.
[DRYW]: For me, I want to make music that makes people feel the way that I feel when I listen to music that I love and am inspired by. I just want to help other people feel that same sense of inspiration and just how awesome music is and how meaningful it can be, how healing it can be. And yeah, I want to be able to keep doing it.
