Ethereal Site

Wallpaper. is a band with a radical new pop-soul sound and sensibility that's the antipodean opposite of "wallpaper" music (in the classic Muzak sense). Wallpaper.'s major label debut on Epic Records is a uncompromising declaration of intent. "Wallpaper. represents the eccentric everyman," says group frontman Ricky Reed, "a blue collar pop band for the other 99%, a twerking class hero who might ACTUALLY show up at your house party - THAT IS WALLPAPER.!" 

Direct no-nonsense party music on the surface, Wallpaper., comprised of Arjun Singh and Tom Peyton on drums, Derek Taylor on percussion and Novena Carmel vocals, follows the trajectory of intoxication through the fuck-ups and the hangovers and the adventures and manages to even pinpoint the divine light that strikes for a split-second in the damnedest of places. In the heartbeat of the songs, Wallpaper.'s provocative party anthems open up to celebrate core human values, especially friendship, neccessary for emotional survival. In "Good For It," the new Wallpaper. single, Ricky, with a mix of swagger and vulnerability, invokes the essential function of friendship operating the deepest levels in times of real trauma. "It's describing a real terrible situation that you're in, without any of the details. There hasn't been a song about just needing help in a long time," he says, harkening back to the Beatle's "Help" and REM's "Everybody Hurts." 

"Ricky Reed Is Real," Wallpaper.'s "thesis statement," contains a litany of attributes, concrete and abstract, re-enforcing the persona established on #STUPiDFACEDD, Wallpaper.'s 2011 breakout track (3.3 million YouTube views and counting). The track takes the artist's identity game to the next level, where "Ricky Reed" is a state-of-mind, an attitude, an idea fused directly with reality (a little like "Elvis," the concept). From "the song in your head" to "that hungover Sunday" right down to the "last dollar in the duct-taped wallet," Ricky Reed is in the details, just like God and the Devil. Born in Berkeley, California, Ricky became obsessed with music at a young age. His mother, a bookkeeper, exposed him to a variety of sounds from the smooth California pop of Steely Dan to the funky sounds of Motown and Sly & the Family Stone. Sly's daughter, Novena Carmel, is one of the vocalists in Wallpaper. "I took on West Coast rap when that hit," Ricky remembers. "I was a young kid listening to Dre and Snoop." But what really flicked young Ricky's switch was post-Nirvana mainstream punk like Green Day, Rancid and Operation Ivy. "It came directly hand-fed through the radio. I was the right age and it hit me." From there, he got into (then) contemporary rock and British bands. "Digging deeper and deeper and then my mom put me onto early Yes. I got into prog rock, ELP, King Crimson, all that insane stuff. That led me to new music and the avant garde, Steve Reich, Boulez, classical music. I had a prog rock band. And then I decided I want to make some simple silly songs." The result was Wallpaper.'s debut, 2009's T REX EP, a collection of two and 1/2 minute satiric pop songs. Influenced by Zapp & Roger and other 70s funk band, Ricky had incorporated Auto-Tune pitch correction into his recordings as a kind of satiric emotional distancing device. Wallpaper.'s debut album, Doodoo Face (also released in 2009), found Ricky reaching into deeper grooves for inspiration. "I started introducing R&B from my childhood into the songs so I could play at house parties and have fun."