Nicky Egan - Personal Space
Yesterday Nicky Egan announced her new full-length This Life, out June 3rd via Transistor Sound/Colemine Records. The announcement comes with the album’s title track — “This song, for me, represents the journey that we experience going from life on this plane to the next, and the beautiful, heartbreaking, incredible transition in between,” Egan told Jazziz. Born and raised outside of Philadelphia and currently based in Los Angeles, Egan has performed all over the country fronting her own musical projects and performing as a hired-gun for Chicano Batman, Tune-Yards, Carla Morrison, Turkuaz, among others.
After graduating from Berklee College of Music with a degree in Contemporary Writing and Production, Egan spent 7 years in Brooklyn, her early years here spent touring as part of powerhouse funk ensemble Turkua. After squeezing into old vans and sleeping on floors on DIY tours with the band, she’d then return to the city to make extra cash nannying and waiting tables. After parting ways with Turkuaz to focus on her solo career, Egan independently released three of what she dubbed “digital 45’s,” premiering an A/B side each month, with a video attached to each A side, accompanied by a release show and live screening. These digital 45’s became a 7-song EP, The 45 Homestead Project, which was released via Ropeadope Records, garnering much praise from tastemakers like American Songwriter, Okayplayer and Performer Magazine.
While at a crossroads in her own project, during a time when she’d have to re-evaluate some tough relationships, Egan received a call from the manager of Los Angeles psych-soul staple, Chicano Batman, looking for a keyboardist and vocalist to join them on their Spring tour. Egan packed a few suitcases, a hat box, and relocated to LA. What was supposed to be a spring run turned into four years of Egan playing keys and singing as a touring member with the band, performing alongside the likes of Portugal The Man, Vampire Weekend, Jack White, and Khurangbin.
In between tour stretches, Nicky Egan has been stealthily plugging away with New York based producer and Dap-Kings guitarist, Joe Crispiano. Beginning with demos written and recorded in Joe’s Staten Island apartment while his neighbor banged on the ceiling, the project came to fruition as a full-length. The album was recorded in part with their friends at the inimitable Diamond Mine Studios, and partially in Dumbo, Brooklyn at an unnamed dungeon where the two spent one too many hours drinking double espressos, margaritas, and building vocal booth forts. Driven by honest confessional songwriting and influenced by your favorite classic soul sounds, the record was recorded to 8 track tape, and features a who’s who of NY’s most sought after players including Homer Steinweiss, Victor Axelrod, Brian Wolfe & Elizabeth Pupo-Walker, to name a few.
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Personal Space are sharing "Long Live the New Flesh," the 2nd single from their new EP, Still Life. It follows "Enron's Trip."
The Cronenberg-inspired single, according to the band is, "basically about how technology transforms the body, how it reshapes our desires, how it can be used as a tool of control, or — maybe, potentially? — liberation...It maps on to a theme of technology in the song, specifically the cycling from enchantment to horror with social media that I think is a pretty common experience for all of us, especially during the 2020 lockdown when we were all stuck at home for so long."
Brooklyn/DC-based Personal Space are a conundrum: indie without a scene, prog disdaining complexity, a dad band without dads. Their 2021 LP, A Lifetime of Lesuire, found the band fretting over downward mobility, preoccupied with ethically sourcing their groceries, and hoping, against hope, that humanity can still find its way to a very chill, socialist utopia.
Still Life is the natural progression as Personal Space grapples with lost connections in a pandemic, tech-bro hustlers and finding the joy in our whirring 2022 realities. The band will celebrate the EP with a release show w/ P.E. and Gold Dime at the Sultan Room on June 5th.
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