There is something inexplicably gripping about music's ability to resurface moments and feelings from specific points in your life. We all have those albums or songs. But what about an album that immediately reinvigorates the wanderlust of youth, inciting dreams of grand undertakings of the unfamiliar? Such is the intention -- and in many, many ways, the accomplishment -- of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida quartet Kids' debut album, "Rich Coast." The Huffington Post is pleased to premiere the stream of their new record.
When it comes to writing, Kids -- Matthew Barrios, Joshua Diaz, Christian Gonzalez, Josiah Sampson -- work to "celebrate the finer parts of our adolescence" and apply them to their lives as adults. As the time approached to craft their album, the band decided to head out to the Appalachian Mountains to camp and hike, seeking to finding inspiration through their own peregrination and displacement.
"One of the most effective ways to reignite ones 'wonder' is to remove himself from what has become too familiar," Kids told HuffPost Entertainment. "We decided that we needed to displace ourselves, take ourselves out of our element, out of our comfort zones and 'clear our palates' so to speak. We spoke many times about what the theme or purpose of the record would be, if ‘Rich Coast’ could speak, what would it say? Given the adventurous adolescent origin of the band’s moniker, we let it sort of speak for itself. We needed to get lost in the woods with no cells phones to figure out what that sound was like. We needed to leap from cliffs and slide down waterfalls to know how to translate that into compositions. A pinnacle part of this experience was doing these things and getting to translate them through our finger tips."
In its 12 tracks, "Rich Coast" bounces from the buoyant to the forlorn, an exercise in the many states that are realized in a life lived to the fullest. Employing a writing style built in pop structure with an indie/folk jacket that wears its heart on its sleeve, Kids implore the listener to not simply reminisce on the fonder days of childhood, but to resuscitate its spontaneity and emotional depth.
"With our mission statement stemming from a Picasso quote, 'All children are artists, the problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up,' we implore our listeners to be adolescent and adventurous in their everyday lives," Kids said. "We really want to evoke an emotion. We want someone somewhere to feel something while listening.
"So much of human culture encourages behavior that is paralyzing to one’s growth artistically, morally, and intuitively. As we get older, society demands not to ask many questions, to not show vulnerability, and above all else, never fail. As a child, failure is an inevitable and necessary part of growth. Imagine if we could keep the same wonder of being a child, paired with the knowledge and experiences of maturing as an adult. That is how we want ‘Rich Coast’ to feel."
"Rich Coast" will be available for purchase on Jan. 27.
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