← archive index · live page · raw markdown

Little Homes

Metadata

title
Little Homes
description
A 2016 LA/SoCal alternative concept album by FEiN: Brandon Woodward and Luke Walton, where alt-rock, funk, hip-hop rhythm, theatrical pop arranging, and social satire turn “little homes” into a map of American denial.
year
2016
releaseDate
2016-05-31
releaseType
album
artist
FEiN
artistId
#fein
artworkBy
Sarah Oh
spotify
https://open.spotify.com/album/2xWtW9VwcaoHkS7FnIJfaQ
apple
https://music.apple.com/us/album/little-homes/1111956961
discogs
https://www.discogs.com/release/19394809-FEiN-Little-Homes
tracks
  • title
    American Man
    song
    american-man
    duration
    4:35
    session
    Luke Walton, oil can percussion, synth programming
  • title
    Sculptor
    song
    sculptor
    duration
    3:56
    session
    Brandon Woodward, cabasa, oil can percussion
  • title
    Girl You Can't Hide It
    song
    girl-you-cant-hide-it
    duration
    3:23
    session
    Justin Klunk, alto, tenor, baritone saxophone
  • title
    Outro
    song
    outro
    duration
    1:27
  • title
    #Grownupz
    song
    grownupz
    duration
    3:42
    session
    Brandon Woodward, bass
  • title
    Goodness Gracious
    song
    goodness-gracious
    duration
    3:47
  • title
    Creatures
    song
    creatures
    duration
    4:19
    session
    Peter Lee Johnson, violin
  • title
    Intro
    instrumental
    true
    duration
    0:44
    session
    Justin Klunk, baritone saxophone
    song
    little-homes-intro
  • title
    Twenty-Three
    song
    twenty-three
    duration
    5:57
    session
    Luke Walton, percussion, Wurlitzer, synth programming
  • title
    Don't You
    song
    dont-you
    duration
    7:09
    session
    Brandon Woodward, guitar, keyboards, found percussion · Luke Walton, keyboards, found percussion · Amaire Johnson, piano · Peter Lee Johnson, violin
  • title
    Roadtrip
    song
    roadtrip
    duration
    3:41
  • title
    Lonely People
    song
    lonely-people
    duration
    3:41
  • title
    Pretty Things
    song
    pretty-things
    duration
    4:40
  • title
    Blanket
    song
    blanket
    duration
    3:38
  • title
    All Her Books
    song
    all-her-books
    duration
    4:30
  • title
    Crawl
    song
    crawl
    duration
    4:20
    session
    Brandon Woodward, guitar
press
draft
false

Content

Little Homes is the full-length FEiN statement: the moment the LA / SoCal duo version of the project becomes legible as more than a clever indie band. Concept album, social satire, maximal arrangement brain, two lead voices, and a theatrical pop-rock/funk thing that does not fit cleanly into the mid-2010s indie bucket.

FEiN, the Los Angeles indie duo of Luke Walton and Brandon Woodward (Luke Francis Walton on songwriter credits), pronounced “fine.” Canonical hub: /music/fein/. BMI describes them as a SoCal alternative duo hatched at USC’s Thornton School of Music Popular Music Performance program, then producing and engineering from Tiny Giant Recording in Westlake Village.

Genesis (FEiN Times Issue #1, Aug 2014): The inaugural zine's Recording Journal introduces the project's first two songs, Monay Grabba and #Grownupz, on a money theme. Walton and Woodward wrote them in practice rooms, Venice and Downtown apartments, walks to Which Wich, a little home in Westlake, and voice notes in LA traffic, between Rick and Morty, Death Note, and word-play jokes. Tracking began at LMU with friend/engineer Michael Christofi: an EP in mind, drums first. One fourteen-hour day of drum experiments and extra catalog songs later, as the journal puts it, Little Homes was born. Brandon was tired. Mobile recording followed (apartments, practice rooms, laptops on chairs); Frank Rosato mixed. The title phrase appears in the journal before the LP existed.

Tiny Giant Recording (Westlake Village): The little home in Westlake made physical — FEiN's home studio where Little Homes and the Tiny Giant session lane were tracked. Discogs special thanks: Bob Miller and John Rupe (for building Tiny Giant). Indexed Feb 18, 2015 FEiN Facebook post (archivist proof: /evidence/fein-tiny-giant-back-door-toe-xray.png): Luke Walton broke his big toe in two places installing a very heavy soundproofed back door; caption Installing the back door didn't go as planned. RIP Luke's big toe. — X-ray annotated OW. (Westlake V imaging). The live room that later hosts J.VEN sessions, Little Homes tracking, and Fresh Fruit was literally under construction.

Physical release (Discogs · liner credits (primary)): US CD, Album, Stereo · Not On Label · May 31, 2016 · Rock / Pop · Alternative Rock, Indie Rock. The FEiN Times Issue #3 eight-page zine wrap carries the authoritative credit block below (Discogs and SoundCloud metadata align). Studio chain: produced by FEiN · recorded by FEiN at Tiny Giant Recording · additional engineering by Michael Christofi at LMU · mixed and mastered by Frank Rosato at Woodcliff Studios · zine cover/layout and album art by Sarah Oh. All songs by Walton/Woodward (BMI). The CD shipped as information about the album and a collage of “art, lyrics, and various musings from us and our friends” — with zine art from Auberi Zwickel, Brian Levy, Haewon Lee, John Cat, Lia Woodward, Margo Camille, Marycruz Herrera, Michael Hermann, Tiffany Chang, and others. Matrix runout: FEIN LITTLE HOMES F1 CD · SM1/CA · 0220-0820.

<h3 id="liner-credits">Liner credits (FEiN Times Issue #3)</h3>

Personnel (from zine wrap): Brandon Woodward — vocals, drums, percussion, guitar (Don't You, Crawl), bass (#Grownupz), keyboards (Don't You), drum and synth programming, oil can/cabasa (Sculptor), found percussion on Don't You (beer bottle, parfait cup, water glass, metal pipe), claps. Luke Walton — vocals, guitars, Wurlitzer (Twenty-Three), keyboards (Don't You), synth programming, oil can (American Man, Twenty-Three), found percussion on Don't You (sliding glass door, car keys, coins), claps. Brian Robert Jones — bass (album). Peter Lee Johnson — violin (Creatures, Don't You). Amaire Johnson — piano (Don't You; later Big Sean producer/keyboardist · Musicians Institute, LA from 2012). Justin Klunk — alto/tenor sax (Girl You Can't Hide It), bari sax (Girl You Can't Hide It, Intro).

Special thanks (full liner list): The Walton Family · The Woodward Family · Frank Rosato · all friends who played on the record · Michael Christofi · Sarah Oh · Bob Miller and John Rupe (for building Tiny Giant) · Merissa Kado · Abbott's Habit (Venice, CA) · Moonlight Beach (Encinitas, CA) · Starbucks (Westlake Village, CA) · University of Southern California · Chris Sampson · Patrice Rushen · Rick Schmunk · Lamont Dozier · Andrea Stolpe · Ndugu Chancler · Aaron Serfaty · Gregg Bissonette (Woodward's high-school drum teacher — acknowledgment, not a performance credit) · Tim Kobza · Richard Smith · Andy Abad · Will Hollis · Jeff Moore · Charles Dickinson · Ken Batchelor · Kirsten Matt · Ory Brochet · Joe Zenas · Amy Huang · Shabnam Ferdowsi · all zine content contributors.

Per-track session credits are also indexed on the tracklist below and on individual song pages.

The album landed May 31, 2016. Apple Music lists it as Alternative · 2016 · sixteen songs · about sixty-three minutes · ℗ 2016 Unsigned; Spotify matches the sixteen-track LP. The Little Little Homes teaser EP arrived first (Mar 2016): Fresh Beats 365 (Mar 10, 2016, Tom Roden) called it FEiN's new EP is a big success — melancholy indie-electropop in the Foster The People Torches lane, with Sculptor as image-obsessed social commentary, #Grownupz as bubblegum indie-pop, and Outro as the release's most experimental vocal-morphing soundscape. #Grownupz broke early in 2016 ahead of the full release. Glamglare covered the pre-release run in March, calling the May album a “sixteen-song epic journey.” Two weeks later Walton and Woodward's FEiN topline landed on Embody (Karolis Labanauskas)'s Remember Us (June 16, Armada Deep / Netherlands).

BMI’s Indie Spotlight is the cleanest external framing: a sixteen-song journey through homelessness, cosmetic surgery, gun worship, and metaphysics, with influences named as Pixies, Nile Rodgers, and St. Vincent and the record blending alt-rock, hip-hop, and funk. “Sculptor” reads as haunting and intense; “Girl You Can’t Hide It” carries pulsing electronica in an early Depeche Mode register.

#Grownupz was the viral single: BMI reports it entered Spotify’s U.S. Viral 50 at #4 and passed half a million streams across services by their September 2016 spotlight. That is the FEiN-era proof that theatrical satire could travel as pop. Official music video.

The title does conceptual work. “Home” here is not a cozy object. It is the private shelter people use to avoid seeing the social world clearly: family, money, guns, religion, bodies, addiction, homelessness, respectability, shame, suburban denial. The album maps the tiny moral rooms people build around themselves and what gets excluded.

Where it sits relative to Scoobert: FEiN Times / early FEiN is band-as-newspaper art-pop shell (Issue #1: comics, horoscopes, games, handmade music); Little Homes is the concept album that grew out of the first LMU sessions (social satire, maximal arrangements, two-voice duo identity). Scoobert Doobert later mutates the same melodic and arrangement brain into a more personal, self-mythologizing bedroom-pop universe (masks, beaches, koans). FEiN is already on the American social stage: the grown-up performance, the household, the body, the gun, the wallet, the church screen, the lonely person outside the “little home.”

Press comparisons stay scattered on purpose (Queen-like logic, MGMT, Depeche Mode, Pixies/Nile/St. Vincent) because the real thing is arranged, theatrical, genre-sliding pop-rock with funk rhythm and concept-album intent: two USC-trained musicians smuggling composition-school ambition into indie-pop packaging.

Worth keeping on the record: an early FEiN interview on YouTube, us then, Thornton/Tiny Giant energy, the duo before Little Homes became the anchor release.

Luke Walton and Brandon Woodward of FEiN after the ALS ice bucket challenge (~2014)

Archivist photo above — soaking wet, combs-forward hair, post-dunk grins. More band photos: /press-kit/#photos · /music/fein/#photos. Fresh Beats 365 (Apr 9, 2016, Tom Roden) — “Tellin’ stories, making cool sounds and shit” — is the strongest indexed print Q&A: USC pop-music carpool origin, sudden #Grownupz Spotify activity as the reason for the Little Little Homes teaser EP, sixteen-track headphone mix intent, and Luke/Brandon on Sculptor (LA entertainment-industry body image) and Don't You as the song that best summarizes FEiN's sound (doors, car keys, beer bottles as found percussion). Site-held twin: FEiN Q&A (Little Homes era). 360° at KCRW Studios: Liminal: 360º live · Stupid Forever: 360º live, Walton and Woodward joined by Ryan McDiarmid (drums) and Geo Botelho (bass); session audio mastered by Riley Knapp. Drag the view around.

Song-meaning annotations live for every lyric track — 1–7, Twenty-Three through Crawl (16); track eight Intro is instrumental (no lyrics page).

Listen: Spotify · Apple Music · Discogs: CD release · FEiN on Spotify · With Frank Rosato · Us then, early interview · Liminal: KCRW 360º · Stupid Forever: KCRW 360º · feintimes.com