James Bookert is trying not to get jaded with age. “Especially being from Austin, there are a lot of older, jaded musicians,” he says on a recent video call. “I was really at risk of becoming one of those people. Maybe, in some ways, I can be and I have to actively fight not to be.”
That tension found its way into Adult Onset Goth, the EP that Bookert released in September under his alias, San Gabriel. “The older I get, the more serious I get,” he says. So Bookert imagined a medical infomercial tackling grown up teen angst. The title, though, isn’t a description of the EP’s sound. San Gabriel’s brand of synth-heavy melancholy is tempered with a touch of sweetness, a style that’s closer to Air’s soundtrack for The Virgin Suicides or Tame Impala on The Slow Rush. There’s a dose of rebellion on the EP too, in the form of the song “Fuck the Money,” where Bookert sings, “I was so tired of 9-5/Working for the weekend.”
(more…)