Oshima Brothers & The Arcadian Wild
Doors 7:00PM / Show 8:00PM
$15
This is a seated show.
Oshima Brothers could have taken the safe path for their second album and stuck to the acoustic, folk-rooted sound of their well-received, self-titled debut. Instead, Sean and Jamie Oshima conceived a more ambitious, more expansive project that reflects the brothers’ wide-ranging artistic interests. On Dark Nights Golden Days (due April 1, 2022), the brothers have crafted a richly layered, genre-splicing sound that is at once retro and metro, spacious and intimate, lush and graceful. It is a set of music that invites people to dance in grocery stores as well as get lost in the wilderness.
Dark Nights Golden Days very much reflects the Portland, ME-based duo’s DIY approach. Sean and Jamie wrote and sang all the songs and played nearly all the instruments, and Jamie also produced, recorded, and mixed the album. The brothers also make all their own videos, and video plays a vital role in their plan for Dark Nights. This hands-on creative process comes naturally to the brothers, who have been making music together since they were kids. “I think our biggest strength is being brothers,” asserts Sean. Preceding the album’s opening track, “Burning Earth,” is a ten-second recording of them as children counting in a song.
The album’s 17 tracks showcase the duo’s strengths, individually and collectively, along with their unique collaborative style. Singer/songwriter Sean pens soulful tunes that mix playful spirits with emotional sincerity, and Jamie uses different instruments, loops, and other sonic textures to construct something fresh and familiar. An electronic beat shakes up a quiet acoustic ballad. A hooky pop melody gets contorted by a noisy guitar. A plucked fiddle supplies an R&B groove. “Some songs will have hundreds of tracks and others just the vocals and a guitar,” Jamie reveals. “Our intention is to make music that feels good to us.”
Jamie and Sean pleasantly resist the rock cliché of brothers who feud and fight. While the two admit they don’t always see eye-to-eye, their creative partnership is overwhelmingly positive – from the wonderful way their voices harmonize and their overlapping musical taste to having someone who has had your back for your entire life. “It’s every musician’s dream to work with a brilliant and multifaceted as Jamie, he makes my job easy,” Sean states.
Music has always been a central part of the brothers’ lives. Their parents performed folk songs and encouraged their sons to make music too. The brief recording that opens Dark Nights was done on a cassette deck their parents gave Sean and Jamie when they were young. Sean jokes that their band started when younger brother Jamie was born, and he is not far off. Jamie picked up a guitar when he was six and, by age 10, declared he was going to be a musician forever. Jamie’s early attraction to music led him to learn to play several instruments and produce music. A self-described introvert, Jamie also did all of this at home. When Sean began writing songs in his teens, they started making music together. “It was natural. Completely organic” Jamie explains. While they played live shows, it was only after they made their first album that they realized “oh, we’re a band!” “It really felt that it all came together during the process of making the album,” Sean elaborates. “We had this music to share that people could hold.”