Coma Girls

〰️ Coma Girls

〰️ LP2

〰️ No Umbrella For Star Flower

〰️ September 2, 2022

〰️ Coma Girls 〰️ LP2 〰️ No Umbrella For Star Flower 〰️ September 2, 2022

Formed in Atlanta, reborn in Los Angeles, regardless of style or location;

Coma Girls is Chris Spino.

Southeast Coma Girls and Southwest Coma Girls are two different beasts. The ATL version had horns, indie-punk and swamp party elements, while the LA version rides a calmer yet meaner Americana, emo-folk, pedal-steel wave. Regardless, the songwriting is all Chris Spino. No matter the vehicle or veneer, the words and the melodies are what ensnare.

After releasing the self-titled debut album Coma Girls in 2015 and the dissolution of another associated act BRUNCH, Chris Spino left Atlanta for Los Angeles. Relocating with only a backpack of belongings and a guitar, Spino rode the American singer-songwriter troupe cross-country to the dark depths of Hollywood, setting up in a Culver City hotel room.

Striking back with a string of new singles, Spino recreated his sound through not only genre but tone and heft. With the emotionally and sonically rich Skyboxer EP arriving in 2021, Spino is working on the second full-length Coma Girls album as he unleashes music that continues to reach for the stars… whether they are burning bright, burning out, or just burning.

“A diaphanous aural watercolour rendering of a psychedelic country landscape. We could be forgiven for concluding that “Skyboxer” is easy-going, melodic, almost lightweight in the way it engages us, and this would be meant as a positive summation. But that would also be doing it down, ignoring a deeper more interesting game that is being played here”

- Americana UK

“With its cutting lyrics and gauzy layers of sound, “Paul Pretzel” is at once wound and bandage. … Spino’s vocal delivery walks the razor’s edge between genuine devastation and sardonic self-deprecation.”

– Spill Magazine

“The bar rock album for the person who doesn’t like bar rock, the pop album for the person who doesn’t like pop.”

– Immersive Atlanta

“A shimmering slice of pop-Americana, riding gentle waves of guitar and draped in weepy pedal steel….Hits a sweet spot.”

– Buzzbands LA

“Pop music with permission to take on whatever musical form the song wanted. It's pop music by a rock band. It sears, jangles, bites and drives even as it catches your ear and doesn't let go.”

- Analogue Music

“In true rock fashion, “Skyboxer” is filled with guitar-heavy moments with sticky melodies and raw vocals. It is the perfect modern rock song, utilizing the loudness that makes rock what it is while taking the best of what modern music has to offer and blending them into a cohesive whole. Combine this with the stirring storytelling found in the lyrics and you realize Coma Girls has got it all. A story of loving and losing being turned into an explosive rock tune tells us to stay on the lookout for what Spino plans on bringing next.”

- Imperfect Filth

“Coma Girls’ “Wedding Roses” strolls to reverb-soaked electric guitar chords that weave and surround, creating an atmosphere deliciously smooth. The drums, steady and relaxed, sit beneath the vocals that reflect on love with a sense of urgency and acceptance that keeps the track emotionally versatile.”

- The Deli Los Angeles

“Skyboxer, the recent EP from folk-rock/psych project Coma Girls, aka singer-songwriter Chris Spino, is a genre-bending collection that seamlessly blends psych-rock, shoegaze, folk, and country into a cohesive and unique take on modern rock shot through with classic, pop sensibility.”

- New Noise

“Coma Girls are like Ariel Pink combined with Pavement, but perhaps more than ever on the new Skyboxer EP, they are more edgy, and jade colored.”

- QRO

“Coma Girls is the psych folk moniker of LA-based singer/songwriter Chris Spino. Since their 2015 self-titled debut, the project has undergone a continuous process of reinvention, at times presenting as a band, a solo project, or a rotating coterie of studio musicians. The project’s latest formation is a close collaboration between Spino and producer Christian Paul Philippi, who together have crafted maximalist shoegaze-tinged folk for Coma Girls’ upcoming sophomore record,

No Umbrella For Star Flower.”

- Under the Radar Magazine

“I never want to keep doing the same thing. I always want to keep pushing forward and trying new things, new sounds. The genre or aesthetic is arbitrary. I just want to get lost in a song, whether that song sounds like Motown, or shoegaze, whatever, I just care about how it hits me when I listen to it.”
— Chris Spino / Coma Girls

“While Coma Girls began as a four-piece power-pop band, these days Spino is the only permanent member, writing all of the songs himself and bringing in a rotating cast of players as the songs necessitate. For “Smoking Gun” and “Crown,” Spino teamed up with Thayer Sarrano (Drive-By Truckers, Of Montreal, Cracker) on pedal steel, fellow Los Angeles-via-Atlanta transplant Shepard Martin on drums, and brought in Winter’s Anders LaSource on harmonica. The singles were recorded straight to tape by Tomas Dolas (Oh Sees, SASAMI, Mr. Elevator and the Brain Hotel) and were co-engineered by Mac DeMarco drummer Joe McMurray at Dolas’ studio in Los Angeles.”

- Baby Robot Media

Moments into Coma Girls’ self-titled debut album, on the jangly opening anthem “Car Alarms,” ringleader Chris Spino announces, as if through a megaphone: “And the world… The world is a giant casino.” 5 years later, the L.A. rockers are still making ambitious and colorful music, but reality has settled in. They’re offering “Skyboxer,” an extravagant yet complex EP that’s given up gambling and instead chooses to face life head-on.

Coma Girls formed in 2014 in Atlanta, and they’ve since come a long way and travelled through a myriad of sonic (and geographical) territories to get to where they are now. After Spino sold his belongings and moved to L.A. with a backpack full of clothes and a guitar, he was committing himself to music wholly as if in marriage. “Music is always the best therapy for me,” he says, though that’s fairly clear in his songs—the urgency and the vitality are palpable.

Their debut received praise from Immersive Atlanta for “show[ing] a surprising unity and identity,” and “Skyboxer” takes that to the next level. Featuring an all-star cast of Spino’s friends, the EP watches his ideas manifest through the talent of seven other musicians as well as his own: Spino himself on vocals, guitar & piano; Travis Popichak on drums; Marvin Figueroa on bass; Dan Gee on keys; Adam (A.R.) Laidlaw on guitar; Michika Skyy on backing vocals; and Connor “Catfish” Gallaher, whose talents can be heard on records from The Black Lips, Tim Heidecker & Weyes Blood, and more on pedal steel. Producing, engineering, and mixing is Tomas Dolas (Oh Sees, SASAMI, Mr. Elevator and the Brain Hotel).

“It really turns into a sonic circus,” Spino says of the EP. Though Coma Girls have never subscribed to a specific genre, its heart has always belonged to pop—Spino’s guilty pleasure. It explains the catchy, indulgent atmosphere of their self-titled LP; on Skyboxer, however, it’s not as evident. “I think this is an effort to bend that a little bit and push it into territory that gets stranger and feels bigger and explores different sounds,” Spino says, and then adds: “but it also retains what Coma Girls has always been about—pop songs.”

The country twang comes through in songs like “Pasadena” and “Wedding Roses.” Spino’s love for folk spans all the way from Bob Dylan to Conor Oberst, and these wistful ballads reflect the melancholic nature of the genre as the lyrics reckon with the complications of being human. “I had a lot of depression sink in,” Spino says about his time spent travelling back and forth between his new home in L.A. and his family in Georgia during the making of this EP. There were funerals, heart attacks, old lovers, unsettled issues—a whirlwind of serious shit that transformed Coma Girls from a carefree party into an introspective journey. The songs are still striking—and when Spino describes them, he can’t stop using the adjective “big”—because the emotions are colossal, and the energy intense.

With his orchestra of friends, Spino was not alone in his musical ruminations. “We were able to explore each song differently,” he says, “but give it a common thread as well.” This collective way of creating yields a diverse, powerful piece of art that anyone can listen to or relate to. “It’s supposed to take you places,” he says. “It’s more like a form of escapism.” “Skyboxer” offers nearly 17 minutes of a safe hideaway from reality, where the listener can drift through a new, all-encompassing world.

The upside to the national lockdown is that it’s forced everyone into a meditative state, which Spino appreciates greatly. With clean time and therapy, he became more articulate and ready to create than ever. “It’s not conducive to my creativity to be up until the sun comes up every day,” he explains. “I’ve done more in the past six months than I have in the past five years. I’ve been insanely productive.” After this EP, there’s a lot more to come from Coma Girls.

- Baby Robot Media