Been Stellar tell us how Jonathan Fire*Eater, David Lynch, The Beatles & more influenced their debut album
New York City doesn’t have as much grit as it did in the ’70s or ’80s or even the ’00s, with real estate prices rising as high as the condos that litter both sides of the East River, but young band Been Stellar are aiming to put a little back in. Their debut album Scream from New York, NY is a howl of an indie rock record, wearing its scrapes and bruises proudly and sounding like it was made in the dark alley equivalent of a studio. (In actuality, they made it with in-demand producer Dan Carey, who’s worked with Wet Leg, Fontaines D.C., black midi, and many more.) There’s real lip-bloodied snarl on songs like “Start Again,” “Can’t Look Away,” and the album’s title track. Listen to the whole thing below.
For more on the album, band members Skyler Knapp, Sam Slocum, Nico Brunstein, and Laila Wayans made us a list of influences, ranging from music (Jonathan Fire*Eater, The Beatles), film (David Lynch), literature (William S Burroughs) and more. Check out their list and commentary below.
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BEEN STELLAR – INFLUENCES BEHIND ‘SCREAM FROM NEW YORK, NY’
My Dinner with Andre
Sam and I watched this movie together a few years ago, and it was one of those experiences that left us feeling like we had just seen the blueprint to humanity. The way the two characters tiptoe towards fundamental questions of how one should live their life are incredibly accurate, especially if you have lived in a sort of pseudo intellectual hotbed like NYC. People here will drink together and then say how a weeks vacation to the Mediterranean made them realize that metropolitan life is bullshit….blah blah blah. What the two realize at the end is that it’s the little pockets of peace that make life worth living. The sip of coffee from the bodega, the phone call with your parents. Yes, it’s not pure psychological enlightenment, but it’s a real fucking experience. You exist, you are here. That’s all that should matter. [Skyler Knapp]
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Jonathan Fire*Eater
Sometimes people compare our music to the Walkmen. And I take zero offense to that – they are a great band. But in truth, we’re way more influenced by their previous iteration. Tremble Under Boom Lights was my pandemic aide, I listened to it pretty much every morning when quarantining with my girlfriend in Long Island. It made me think about lost past lives in New York, the tragedies and triumphs of being a band that’s not willing to take compromises, and the value of bass and drums. It really changed my life, so you should definitely go listen to it……..best songs are “give me daughters” and “Winston plum: undertaker.” [Skyler Knapp]
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Philosophy
Cringe when you say it out loud, but it’s going to creep up on you at some point. There was a big atmosphere in NYC of “fuck thinking, let’s dance” after the pandemic (and even now) that really kinda terrified/annoyed me. Art is meant to be experienced as well as reflected on. Hypey vibes are just as important as really digging deep into things that matter. Let yourself find a space between thinking too much and denying the hard questions – there you’ll find a cool spot to make music. [Skyler Knapp]
Inland Empire by David Lynch
There’s an uncanniness to how intimacy is portrayed in this movie that I really grabbed onto. There’s a scene between the couple in the film that I can never get out of my head, the man and woman no longer recognize each other.. I think the moments on the album that are about love or relationships take some cues from how Lynch depicts love in this film. [Sam Slocum]
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Burroughs’ cut up method
Lyrically I’m very interested in this process that Burroughs used… where if an author is very authentic with their stories and their emotional contents, that the stories can be rearranged in any way and still give that same emotion to the reader. [Sam Slocum]
Beaches
There’s a few instances on the record that immediately remind me of times the five of us have spent near the water. Songs like “Shimmer” and “Take Down” have a calmness to them that I think contrasts the rest of the record. They remind me of the feeling of getting to Rockaway beach coming out of the city. I’m really proud of that contrast on the record. [Sam Slocum]
Heart Under by Just Mustard
Across all of their discography they don’t just use guitars as an instrument but almost like a conductor for their pedals. Sometimes they utilize volume and LFO rate setting rather than playing strings. I didn’t think of it as much when I was listening to their earlier recordings, imagining it was meticulous trial and error in the studio. But they perform everything perfectly live. It demonstrated to me a new way to write guitar parts and reimagine the instrument. [Nico Brunstein]
Let it Be… Naked – The Beatles
I’ve always had this idea that when it comes to most genres of music (rap and dance are pretty excluded from this) that well-written songs can hit just as hard emotionally with stripped back production as compared to the fully arranged recording. This Beatles record and a lot of the new reissues with acoustic versions of songs highlight that their songwriting still translates when they’re not fully produced or even just played on guitar. We tried to focus on that idea a lot for when we started writing the album and hopefully we continue to focus on that ethos. [Nico Brunstein]
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Hip hop drums
I really love how simple and repetitive old hip hop drums are. That was a big influence for the drums on this album. I tried to come up with parts that felt memorable/ trancelike. [Laila Wayans]
The color blue
Early on in the writing process the album always felt like the color blue to me. I’m really happy with the album art because I feel the colors are really reflective of what the songs feel like. [Laila Wayans]
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Been Stellar celebrate the release of their album with a Brooklyn show at Baby’s All Right tonight (6/21) with High, and will be on tour with Fontaines D.C. this fall including two nights at Brooklyn Paramount on October 15 & 16.
Been Stellar – 2024 Tour Dates
June 21st – Brooklyn, NY @ Baby’s All Right
July 26 – Sheffield, UK @ Tramlines Fest
July 27 – Oxfordshire, UK @ Truck Fest
July 28 – Suffolk, UK @ Latitude Festival
August 1-4 – Chicago, IL @ Lollapalooza
Sep 20 – Seattle, WA @ Showbox SoDo *
Sep 21 – Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater *
Sep 22 – Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom *
Sep 24 – San Francisco, CA @ The Warfield *
Sep 26 – Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Palladium *
Sep 27 – San Diego, CA @ SOMA *
Sep 28 – Pomona, CA @ The Fox Theater *
Sep 30 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Van Buren *
Oct 2 – Englewood, CO @ Gothic Theatre *
Oct 4 – Lawrence, KS @ The Granada Theater *
Oct 5 – Omaha, NE @ Slowdown *
Oct 6 – Madison, WI @ The Sylvee *
Oct 8 – Minneapolis, MN @ The Fillmore Minneapolis *
Oct 9 – Chicago, IL @ The Salt Shed *
Oct 11 – Toronto, ON @ Queen Elizabeth Theatre *
Oct 12 – Montreal, QC @ MTELUS *
Oct 13 – Boston, MA @ Roadrunner *
Oct 15 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount * (SOLD OUT)
Oct 16 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount *
Oct 18 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club * (SOLD OUT)
Oct 19 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club *
Oct 20 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Fillmore Philadelphia *
Nov 3 – Amsterdam, NL @ Bitterzoet
Nov 4 – Cologne, DE @ Blue Shell
Nov 6 – Berlin, DE @ Cassiopeia
Nov 7 – Hamburg, DE @ Molotow Skybar
Nov 9 – Warsaw, PL @ Klub Hybrydy
Nov 10 – Prague, CZ @ Cafe V Lese
Nov 11 – Munich, DE @ Orangehouse
Nov 13 – Milan, IT @ Bellezza
Nov 14 – Zurich, CH @ Exil
Nov 16 – Brussels, BE @ Witloof Bar
Nov 17 – Paris, FR @ Point Ephemere
Nov 19 – Bristol, UK @ The Fleece
Nov 21 – Manchester, UK @ Manchester Academy 3
Nov 22 – Glasgow, UK @ King Tuts
Nov 24 – Newcastle, UK @ The Cluny
Nov 25 – Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
Nov 26 – Nottingham, UK @ Bodega
Nov 28 – London, UK @ Scala
Nov 30 – Dublin, IE @ The Workman’s Club
Dec 1 – Galway, IE @ Roisin Dubh
Dec 2 – Belfast, UK @ Ulster Sports Club
* supporting Fontaines D.C.
