The Fat Angel Sings

The title of the lead single off Diners’ new album three, called “Fifteen On A Skateboard,” telegraphs what the song is about, at least on the surface. the song was about the “light-hearted joy of bombing a hill.” The thing is, had the writer listened a little more carefully, he might have picked up on a somewhat deeper meaning in the lyric, “heard another song / so familiar I was long gone.”

See, the song isn’t just about being 15 on a skateboard, though it functions nicely as that as well. It’s about an experience Broderick had at a Stephen Steinbrink concert about a year ago listening to the singer perform his song, “Huachuca City.” It was a song Broderick listened to over and over as a teenager, and hearing it for the first time in years catapulted him back into the tracts of memory and the particular feeling of being 15 and skating. So, broadly, the song isn’t about being young, but about how songs can trigger memories and how ingrained music can be with different times of our lives.

“I’m totally straight-edge, and it felt like I was tripping out, in a way,” Broderick says of the concert experience. “So I wrote a song about it.”

It’s a moment of lyrical prestidigitation that makes three such a rewarding listen. The entire album is nostalgic and melancholy, filled with instrumentation and sounds that recall the sensibilities of Brian Wilson and Harry Nilsson. Diners is a band that performs with up to five or six people at times, but the name is just the name for Broderick’s solo project. Three, recorded by Jalipaz Nelson at Audioconfusion Studios, is Diners’ second full-length album, the third if you count the seven-song EP Throw Me A Tenas a full record, which Broderick basically does. (“It flows like an album,” he says.)

Broderick is the type of songwriter who writes about his personal experiences, but not directly. Instead, he’ll write around them, aiming for the margins of the page instead of the lines. His songs — and he is a prolific songwriter, one of those musicians compelled to compose like the rest of us are to eat — function as a journal for him.

The song begins with some audio of skate wheels on pavement, and as the chorus hits, brimming with warm, hazy nostalgia, singer Tyler Broderick reminisces about his younger days. “I was 15 on a skateboard / skating through the neighborhood.”

The sentiments and musical ideas expressed in this album are beyond beautiful. This album was recorded and mixed by jalipaz at audioconfusion and mastered by Skip Rimza. Tracks 1, 6, 8, and 11 were recorded on my laptop at Funny World. All songs written and produced by Tyler Broderick.

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Tyler Broderick – lead vocals, electric guitar, 12 string acoustic guitar, nylon string guitar, slide guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, piano, midi instruments, drums, omnichord, slide whistle, clave, sampling, skateboarding, sleigh bells
Alex Benson – vocals
Jill Frensky – vocals, omnichord
jalipaz – laughing, sampling
Tristan Jemsek – drums
Aaron Ponzo – vocals, wind noises
Seth Ponzo – vocals
Talisha Royer – vocals
Cesar Ruiz – bass guitar
Mike Sherk – electric guitar, keyboard, whistling
Stephen Steinbrink – vocals
Chaz Tyler – vocals
Bob Vielma – trombone