Alter Mitty - Lofi Powerpop / Indie Rock - Portland, OR
Alter Mitty is the solo project of Kelly La Croix, a long-standing songwriter and musician in the Billings, MT community, who fled westward in 2016.
Kelly was an active participant in the city’s music scene for 20 years, writing about it in zines in the 2000s, creating a podcast and youtube channel (Big Sky Sub Rosa) that frequently featured Montana artists, helping to organize and publicize the first two Julia Louis-Dreyfests (fka Richard Dreyfest), recording demos for bands, and was formerly a member of powerpop group Megagiant, punk bands Idiot Fuel and The Slandersons, and, his longest running and perhaps most well-known project, punk-garage foursome NoiseNoiseNoise.
Range Brown Range - his first full length release since 2016 - deals primarily with his move away from Montana and asks what it means to leave a place you’re not content with when it informs a large part of your identity. Prairie Is An Island is about longing to be somewhere else but not being able to leave. The Honyocker’s Lament broaches feeling racially isolated (Kelly is Asian American).
Elsewhere, the album surfaces different, though related themes: the title track is a melancholy instrumental that evokes rolling along the prairie landscape. Hi Line Wash features a raunchy guitar hitting wrong notes through its verses about the worn beauty of small towns. From 9 to Forever is a celebratory chest-pounder that finds the subject proclaiming that he - and by extension, all of us - can continue living and creating in perpetuity. The Dueling Flags of 20th Street West seeks to immortalize a real-life conflict between two businesses that operate across from one another who each bought the biggest American flag they could find in order to outdo the other; a microcosm, perhaps, of Billings culture.
Musically, the album resembles both the powerpop of Megagiant and the lofi self-produced sounds of NoiseNoiseNoise, while exploring new territory with touches of indie and country music and forays into spoken word and instrumental music. Those explorations are partially due to a large cast of former bandmates, friends, and family that sit in on different songs, adding auxillary instruments like trumpets, lap steel guitar, and standup bass when needed. Members of many Billings bands can be found adding their sounds to the tracks, including Idaho Green, Bull Market, The Budgets, Halfway Killed, Adam Rutt & the Electric Outlaws, Wes Urbaniak and the Mountain Folk, and Farley Moore, among others.
To kick off the album’s release, Kelly will be premiering an acoustic set, interview, and music video on Facebook Live (link below!) on the night of Wednesday May 26th. The acoustic set will include songs from the new album, some from the first Alter Mitty release, Megaiant, and NoiseNoiseNoise songs.
Recommended tracks: From 9 to Forever, The Honyocker’s Lament, The Dueling Flags of 20th Street West, Hi-Line Wash, Gateway, Range Brown Range
