The Idyllists’  latest record, The Grave and Unfortunate life of Lord Hoffway and His Magnificnet Piano (Talking Bird Entertainment), could not be more improbable.
 
The Idyllists spent three years and two acclaimed albums making what a Los Angeles Times writer called “crisp, breezy Britpop” infused with “jaunty optimism.” 
 
British vocalist Ian Webber and his American bandmates toured the country—from New York’s CMJ Festival and Austin’s SXSW. They became a fixture in their adopted hometown of Los Angeles—with headlining, high-profile residencies at the Hotel Café, the Viper Room, and the late Spaceland. They gained international fans —with singles featured across the media world, from television (MTV’s The Hills, CW’s One Tree Hill) to advertisements (Volkswagen).
 
Then, everything changed.
 
Relationships ended. Day jobs were lost. Families were started. Bass player George Mohler moved to the Bay Area to take a university teaching position. Matthew Barge moved to New York for graduate school. After countless hours on the road, life was at an impasse, even if the band was never more cohesive. “We just get along really well, and have a lot of the same ideas about music,” says Sam Gallagher, the band’s drummer. "So why not make some more music?"
 
“The world ended up not being the way we thought it was,” echoes Matthew Barge, the band’s keyboardist and guitarist who shares songwriting duties with Webber. “So we made a record about it.”
 
If the band’s first two records—2009’s The Long Hours Between Sunset and Morning and 2010’s The Idyllists—were doggedly sunny takes on young love and limitless future, its third is a relentlessly complex view of lives diverging and dreams amended. Melding hushed melancholy, lyrical and rhythmic complexity, and raw intimacy, the Idyllists’ The Grave and Unfortunate Life of Lord Hoffway and His Magnificent Piano is a moody, introspective, and immersive album from a band with a unified vision about music—and unclear vision about their place in the world.

“I think that all of us found ourselves at similar life junctures,” explains Barge. “You start thinking about age, commitment, failing to live up to your own expectations about what your life would look like, being sort of surprised by how it turned out. Nobody wanted to make a bunch of happy songs." 


In the Winter of 2010, Barge migrated to LA from New York for the first time since relocating. The duo spent a few weeks in a small studio in Webber's Laurel Canyon cabin crafting the songs that would become the core of The Grave and Unforuntate Life . . . . Webber explains, “Some songs Barge had coming in and I made some small suggestions. Others of mine, he had some small suggestions. And others we wrote really quickly in the Canyon.”
 
Over three major recording sessions, the band would get around to tracking seven of the original Barge-Webber songs that they conceived in Laurel Canyon. “We tried some other ideas, both older and newer,” notes Webber. “But nothing was quite as real, or raw, as what we came up with over those rainy weeks in the Canyon.”
 
Co-producing with engineer Daniel Dempsey, the Idyllists tackle friendships dissolving, lives spinning apart, and uncertainties about the qualities of lives crafted. They confront failed, failing, and stuck relationships. They confront what happens when life demonstrates its limitations.
 
The Idyllists’ The Grave and Unfortunate Life of Lord Hoffway and His Magnificent Piano captures the confusions, concerns, and angst of trying to find the right life, or just a good life—and the uncertainties, insecurities, and laments that go along with it—with tremendous musicianship, sharp melodies, and unwavering honesty. 


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