The Fat Angel Sings

L.A. musician Sarah Tudzin makes fizzy, self-deprecating power pop under the moniker Illuminati Hotties. “Paying Off The Happiness,” like a few other unlikely rallying cries before it, plays off the very real, very troubling issue of financial insolvency among the millennial set with with a joyful sigh and shrug, The hook, sung breezily over some chintzy dissonance, might be the catchiest outpouring of debt-fueled anxiety since Alvvays sang about student loans in 2014.  Illuminati Hotties were The Best Band That Almost No One Saw at SXSW: Sarah Tudzin is the project’s mastermind…She has a malleable writing style that feels ripe with potential, and she seems comfortable doing just about anything. The album’s lead single, “(You’re Better) Than Ever,” is a surf-pop shredder by way of Courtney Barnett, but its follow-up “Cuff” is a masterful blend of heavy-soft dynamics that shows off the many sides to this project. Tudzin’s songs vacillate between humorous and cutting with ferocity.

Despite the pluralized nom de guerre, illuminati hotties is the creative outlet of Sarah Tudzin – a producer and engineer hailing from the sprawl of Los Angeles. illuminati hotties has been lighting up stages across SoCal since Fall 2016 with playfully interweaving guitar lines, relentless rhythmic momentum, and strikingly self-aware vocals.

With its chorus that swells before spilling over, “Patience” is a plea and an appreciation that demonstrates the dichotomy of virtue. It also highlights the duality of Illuminati Hotties, a playful project that balances heart-on-sleeve sentiments

At first listen, illuminati hotties is a sun-drenched, irreverent volley with the onset of adulthood, but as the listener dives deeper, they will find an earnest consideration of musical phrasing and deliberately crafted wordplay regarding the complexity of love, loss, and skateboarding. Lauded as local “tenderpunk pioneers,” illuminati hotties has perfected the blend of sweetness and ferocity, of celebration and despondency, in their debut album, Kiss Yr Frenemies.

Taken from their debut album, which will be released later Tiny Engines, new track “Cuff” is indicative of that warped journeying, the track slowly introducing itself with a hazy, foggy opening minute or so, the subtle production and half-buried vocals conjuring a sense of embedded melancholy, a drifting sadness that is soon wiped out, to some degree, as the whole thing bursts in to a bristling, raucous life you never saw coming.

“Cuff” is a musical reminder that we can truly never have a band figured out. Last summer we were introduced to illuminati hotties and their sunny single “You’re Better Than Ever.” Since then the band has signed to Tiny Engines and will release Kiss Yr Frenemies on 5/11. While their first single offering was bright and a total blast, “Cuff” is more subdued; a quiet single of introspection and stunning beauty.