Lavish Obituaries
A new trio out of Tulsa, Oklahoma called Lavish Obituaries caught our attention late last year with their thrilling debut single, “Shotgun To The Moon.” The groovy, beat-driven track mixes elements of funk, synth-pop, and hip-hop, with Cassidy Reed’s soulful vocals intersecting with Garret Steelman’s sing-speak verses to create a simultaneously far out and relaxing vibe. They’ve since followed up that great track with their second single, “Kiss It,” a song that leans into a more dark and sensual feel in a way that’s Prince-like in nature. An additional and key part of their dynamic is their dark, eye-catching aesthetic, which like their name alludes to, celebrates the occult and features sock and buskin styled masks, wilting roses, and candles. The trio is showing no signs of slowing down, as they have plans to release even more singles over the course of the next few months.
We recently caught up with the band via e-mail to chat about their first two singles, the origins of the project, and much more:
Tell us a little bit about how this project came together. What are each of your backgrounds playing music and how’d you start playing together?
This project is somewhat a product of quarantine restlessness. The three of us live together, along with our photographer Rebecca Rayon. Garrett Steelman is apart of a local band Candy Fly and has been playing music since he could. He does vocals and plays bass, guitar, and mix/produce. Nik Natale is our main producer so far and also does vocals and keys, sometimes bass and guitar. Cassidy Reed is a lyricist and vocalist. She sits in on studio sessions and production to offer ideas/opinions, and she is our manager/promoter. She also does visual edits for the project. Prior to this project, Nik and Garrett had a neat new-wave project called NIKSTEEL, with a few releases but lost interest in the project after a few too many technical issues with an album release and stagnant desire to pursue the same sound. We all lived together a year before forming this project. Rebecca and Cassidy lived together first, then Nik and Cassidy met online and immediately hit it off, then convinced Rebecca to come meet Garrett. The four of us are best friends and are all dating. Nik and Garrett have been best friends for years, as well as Cassidy and Rebecca. This all started somewhere in early 2019 and we formed Lavish in late 2020. We started playing together pretty soon after meeting and realizing we shared a deep love and appreciation for music and art. Over quarantine, we had all these songs we were sitting on, just a playlist on Nik’s laptop. We decided we were tired of sitting on them and started tweaking things, and getting serious about doing something with what we had. We’re still in very early stages, but ever since we formed it’s daily work. Daily discussion. Daily passion, and it feels good. It definitely makes it easier that we live together. I think we’ve all been told a time or two that pursuing music isn’t realistic and it feels right to just be doing what we’ve all wanted for most of our lives anyways.
How would you describe your music? How does it compare to previous projects you’ve been involved in?
Our music we don’t really want to genre-fy because we don’t like the idea of being put into one box or having certain expectations/pressure on our music. If others want to figure out what we are, they can, but we don’t want to fully endorse any one sound as ours. We simply all live and act and create on our own vibrational frequency, and those three separate vibrations are a culmination of all the influences we have have been touched by. We put all of what we have to offer together and there it is! That’s all Lavish is. Just three friends that love each other and creating together and that have an additional great team of supportive and talented friends behind us in the area, that choose to occasionally throw their vibration on ours and it’s fun and welcome when they do. We never came into it with a "this is who we want to sound like or be like" mindset. We are trying to just make stuff we like listening to ourselves and have a fun time making. We don’t think we are doing anything new, but we definitely aren’t doing just one of any of the known genres/sound things either.
Who would you cite as some musical influences? You really seem to pack a ton into your music, which is awesome. What are you most interested in exploring sound-wise for this project?
We all take influences from just about any genre. We could like stuff from r&b, funk, indie rock, alternative anything, jazz, hip-hop, oldies, soul, industrial, prog rock, old country not new, emo, synth-pop, bedroom pop, blues, psychedelic, jam bands, folk, pop-rock, shoegaze, punk, pop-punk, indie stuff, hardcore, we really mean anything. It’s not necessarily genre for us. It’s more about individual artists, and shit that just sounds listenable. Erykah Badu, The Strokes, Tyler the Creator, Frank Ocean, Daft Punk, and Patsy Cline, Mac Miller, Bones, sparkle horse, bootsy collins, j mascis, R. Stevie Moore, The Cure, Danny Brown, Lil Peep, Yung Lean, Billie holiday, Suicide Boys, Otis Redding, Benny Sings, Teddy Pendergrass, The Beastie Boys, Kathleen Hanna, Kim Gordon, Nine Inch Nails, Jack White, Portishead, BROCKHAMPTON, St, Vincent, Marvin Gaye, Type O negative, The Beach Boys, Black Flag, Mac demarco, SZA, the Ramones, bone thugs, biggie, brother lynch, The Garden, and their solo stuff too, Steely Dan, Slowdive, Rihanna, Elliott smith, Bread, the Isley brothers, Jerry Paper, Joan Jett, The Bee Gees, Cher, Amy Winehouse, Fleetwood Mac, Alice In Chains, Ozzy Osbourne, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson.
We also take influence from film, fashion, comics, visual arts, video games, the 80’s, comedy, various writings, our families and friends, our cats, the parts of pop culture that pique our interest, just life experience, and other sub cultures we find interesting. We want to bring all of those influences to our music and art, not just the musical ones. David Lynch is a big one for all of us. We like Dennis Rodman a lot. We like various animes and love anything we love intensely, like it’s a cult classic for our group of friends. We are all really close and constantly make jokes about all splitting the costs of a commune. We are most interested in exploring and learning about who we are as individuals and a group. We don’t reject identity. We just reject the idea of that identity not being able to evolve and change as we do.
Tell us about your two singles, “Kiss It” and “Shotgun To The Moon.” How’d these songs come together? What inspired the lyrics on each?
We don’t think there’s anything to be said specifically about the lyrics on our two singles so far, as a group anyways. They’re personal lyrics about where we were and what we were feeling during those days we wrote em. We all write our own parts. We want our audience to make connections with their own lives and bond with the singles, with their own meaning attached to the songs, not our meaning but our messages getting across. The songs came together like most of ours do! We usually go off of an instrumental, then someone writes something on it, and we go off of each other. There’s no specific process. Sometimes one of us will just have a melody or concept or verse. We just work on a track until it sounds done to us and has everything we want that we are able to do. Then we send it to our dear friend, fellow member of Candy Fly, and mastering Engineer Matthew Baker. Then it comes back all sexy and ready for good speakers.
In addition to your great music, I really dig the band’s aesthetic. It’s like this cool combination of goth, horror, and even a bit of the occult. It’s kind of in line with the name Lavish Obituaries and what you delve into on the two singles. How do you see this interacting with the music? What role do you see it playing in your art and presentation?
Our aesthetic was something we never really had any differences or hesitation on. It’s just us, but a little dramatized. We all have somewhat of an interest in dark things. We all share most of the same interests actually. We’re not saying we are into whatever satan has to offer just because we like the darker kind of aesthetic hahaha, but we all are sensitive people, largely affected involuntarily by trauma and mental illness, like a lot of people. We feel represented when we dress in that dark stuff. We feel empowered. Because we aren’t cookie cutter individuals that I think we all have felt compared to or envious of or eclipsed by at certain points in life. We also love beautiful, dreamy things, and that’s a side of life we want to represent too. Lavish Obituaries is a fun juxtaposition first of all. A non-sensical sort if contradiction. Duality all that shit blah blah blah. We just feel represented by it. It’s black and white, and our music comes out being somewhere in the middle. Seemed fitting when we decided to form. We have the best time exploring the grey areas of life and learning what our perspective even is. We are all big appreciators of art and digesters before we are artists ourselves. We know how important it is to relate to SOMETHING when you feel like you have nobody. To like something. To have a positive message. That’s what we want to bring people. We want an immersive art experience that goes beyond just releasing music. We want comics! We want shoes! And pants that say lavish on the ass! And a video game! And so much more we’re not gonna mention or can’t even imagine for ourselves yet. Not because we wanna go fully commercial but because we want to go on that journey together and make that WORLD together. We also want to be able to explore other creative outlets and collaborate with all kinds of creatives in their own respective fields. sick ass visuals until we rot away just because we believe in being as thorough as we can if we’re gonna make something.
What can people expect from your next releases sound-wise? Are you planning on releasing more singles or an EP/LP?
I wouldn’t say our listeners should expect anything sound wise! Haha we are surprising each other all the time. There will be some songs that are us solo, us with other friends featured, sometimes just 2 of us instead of 3. We have about a year’s worth of singles we want to release at a steady pace, building the visuals the whole time. Building the story. Building an experience and aspects of ourselves and our art for people to relate to and bond with on their own terms. Some stuff will be more rap. Some will be more singer/songwriter. Some will be dark. Some will be light and pretty. And most of it will be a combo of all that with some other shit thrown in too. Once we feel ready enough we’ll release a bigger body of work or once we feel we have a collection of cohesive enough-sounding tracks. We’re chillin with singles as far as we can see for a while. It’s fun for each song to get all the TLC visually we can think to give it at the time.
The Tulsa scene seems really cool. What’s it like? Who are some artists/bands that you’d recommend to our readers?
The Tulsa scene is cool! There’s a lot going on here and a lot of resources for artists (other artists). It’s cheap to live here too and feels like a good place to start. There are two sides of it for us like anything else. There’s one side that’s super supportive and nurturing and inclusive, and then there’s a more exclusive side of people that think they’re too good to support anyone else or work with anyone else and deserve some sort of reverence for just making stuff like so many others are here. Not too much this past year with Covid obviously. We miss live shows.
Some music artists we’d say to check out include Ramona and the Phantoms, Stepmom, Solbakk, count tu tu, Zunis, broncho and sports are some bigger names from the area that aren’t any longer here but we’re fans, Goodridge, PRETTYFACES, Keathley, along came Paully, Pisha, Josh Reed, Dr. Jr., Candy Fly, Mico Hughes, and our mastering engineer’s band Pets, to name a few. There’s also a big visual arts scene here too but we love toooo many to start naming. Two of our close friends that do some killer work are Troy Scrimsher and Logan Dyer, who have also worked with us on some Lavish stuff. Claire Gibson is a great photographer and sweet friend. Jake Pittman aka Spitrag does some crazy shit. We like a few local collectives/publications as well. There is ASLUT magazine which features a lot of local artists, and they are super loving and nice, and there is cult love sound and tapes that put out local tapes and just a bunch of cool shit in general.
Are you planning on playing these songs live? Since there’s definitely a visual aspect to this project beyond just the music, what do you envision your live shows looking like?
We didn’t form the group with the intention to play live shows, but we’ll see. Who knows? Maybe we will someday once all of this is settled down with Covid.
What’s next for this project?
Right now, we have a single with Matt being mastered and a backlog of about 6 or 7 other singles ready to go to Matt. And we are recording/writing/mixing or plotting promo every day. We are shooting a music video that we are very excited about with a dear friend Claire Gibson and photographer Rebecca Rayon soon. You can plan on some creepiness. You can plan on some fashion stunts. We’re taking a trip out of town to a place that’s a little special to all of us for a few days to shoot. Right now that’s all we can really think about. We are working normal jobs overtime as fuck to survive and pay all of our collaborators and to make all the rest of the music stuff happen. It’s exhausting sometimes, but we are all really genuinely happy with how this is going and grateful to be doing it at all, but especially together. That’s all we want is to feel mentally free and okay. To be able to know each other and love each other, and to do that through what we make is the best part of all of this. We just want to make friends as this continues to grow and be its own fluid thing like us. We want the inner child in everyone to feel okay, and especially each other. The base for everything we are doing is love, and we don’t mean that in some pseudo-guru-type shit way. We just really are some best friends that want the best for everyone because we’ve all been through some really crazy shit in our personal lives. We are chosen family! And we want everyone to be apart of the family because we realize everyone is the way they are for a reason, and if we’re all trying our best to get back to that base of love, we’re doing alright. That process of coming back looks really different on people, and we’re glad it does. Makes life more interesting. We love one another and have fun doing it.
You can stream Lavish Obituaries music on your platform of choice. Their two singles are also available on Bandcamp. Keep up with the trio by following them on Instagram and liking them on Facebook.
