Self-Portrait: Pearl & The Oysters

Artwork by Mickey Miles

For our Self-Portrait series, we invite our favorite musicians to create an audio depiction of themselves through songs from the past and present.

As heard on their dazzling new record Coast 2 Coast and first with the mammoth Stones Throw label, Pearl & The Oysters brilliantly blend multigenerational jazz, space age pop, and synthy AOR together with a rare level of proficiency. Now, the duo guide an audio odyssey into the inspirational touchstones of their work.

Here’s a little over 2 hours of music that offers a window into the scope of our stylistic inspirations as P&TO. A hodgepodge of long-standing formative influences, aesthetic shocks, and existence-altering discoveries, these are all tunes that had a profound impact on us, and came to define different eras of the band over the last 7 years. This collection is eclectic in nature, and mirrors our own chaotic taste as listeners, which spans multiple national/regional styles and eras in recorded music, covering genres and sub-genres as disparate as early electronic novelty records, Brazilian bossa nova, Japanese city pop, AOR, disco, garage rock, exotica, fusion, sunshine pop, baroque counterpoint, 90s lounge pop, lo-fi home recordings of the 70/80s, 60s psychedelia, French impressionism, hauntology/plunderphonics, easy-listening, jazz pop, etc—the common thread being perhaps that all of these songs tend to share a certain compositional sophistication. You’ll find some usual suspects and ubiquitous classics in here (McCartney, Beach Boys, Jobim), but also—slightly—deeper cuts (White Noise, R. Stevie Moore, The High Llamas, Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman). Enjoy!