New Music: Tired and Bored by Empty Nesters

Empty Nesters, the local lo-fi solo project of Eric Liao, recently released their fifth EP Tired and Bored.

The band’s approach is simple, usually recording from Liao’s bedroom and keeping it lo-fi and DIY, but don’t let that make you think the quality of the product suffers. Tired and Bored starts off with “I’m Not Ok, but It’s Ok.,” which is a perfect example of the marriage between the lo-fi music, calming vocals, DIY recording and experimentation. It starts nice and slow with ambient crowd sound in the background only to progress and shift to a screaming and distortion laden final couple of minutes. The track takes you on an adventure of the fragility of mental health and the concept of being “ok.” The track is a strong stage setter for what is to come.

The entire EP is written, record, produced, and played by Liao, except for some help from drummer Robert Thompson on the first two tracks. Thompson plays drums for Empty Nesters when they perform live, as you can imagine after listening to a few songs that this sound would be difficult to pull off by yourself live.

There are various audio clips of phone conversations and in-person conversations spliced in throughout the album. I absolutely love the depth and layers they add and I’ve always been a sucker for the addition of these types of things as a nice change of pace.

Have a listen to Tired and Bored below and go hear it live as they open for Chacal and Deathsticks at House of Targ. We had the joy of hearing some of the songs live this past weekend at Megaphono and we can confirm that you will not be disappointed.