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Fueled by contagious energy, power-pop outfit Tiny Jackets joins the harmonies of The Everly Brothers with the airy yet intense guitar sound of Teenage Fanclub in their latest single, “My Own Dark Age.”
Set to come out on Oct. 18 with a subsequent release show on Oct. 19, the group’s upcoming new track is a study foundation for the band to further develop their power-pop sound. “This is finally the first tune we’ve finished that really sounds like what we’ve been going for,” says Tiny Jacket guitarist and vocalist Peter Dean.
“My Own Dark Age” runs over six minutes long, ending with a building soundscape of distorted guitar and harmony. This extended length comes from Tiny Jackets writer, vocalist and guitarist Kelly Simmons channeling his inner Rivers Cuomo. “I remember when I was in college, hearing the Blue Album [Weezer], I think it’s the last song “Only in Dreams,” [when] you think it’s over and it goes into this amazing outro that goes on forever,” Dean says. “I always loved that trick in the song. I think I’ve been chasing that feeling as long as I’ve been playing music and writing songs.”
Tiny Jackets’ single plays with the idea of one’s own internal blocks to freedom and being self-aware as to the effects of your own thoughts and actions. Simmons writes, “Am I the cage? / I am the bird? / Am I the one who’s chosen this / To be never let out?”
Guitarist John Almeida and drummer Paul Noel fill out the four-piece, which first came about around the beginning of COVID. To maintain social distancing, Tiny Jackets rehearsed in a warehouse. Spaced 20 feet apart, the band members turned their amps up high and leaned into their power-pop influences. “I think that sort of influenced a bit of the big guitar-ness of it,” Simmons says.
Simmons also took the time to educate Dean in the ways of sibling harmony, an intimate type of harmony famously used by groups such as The Everly Brothers and The Carpenters that, believe it or not, doesn’t strictly require a blood relation to do it properly. Though unrelated, Simmons and Dean learned to match each other’s vocal inflections to achieve a similar satisfying effect found in the great proprietors of sibling harmony in the past decades.
“[Simmons] was patient with me and worked with me on it,” Dean says. “I remember the first time we clicked in on it, I was looking around because I thought somebody else in the band was singing with us, but it [was] the sound [of the] magical blend of our two beautiful voices.”
GO: See Tiny Jackets perform at The Six (Midnight Society), 3341 SE Belmont St., themidnightsocietypdx.net/the-sx. 7 pm Saturday, Oct. 19.