Shy Girls keeping it close to vest
in the City.” That project caught some attention, but the real turning point came in February 2013 when he released his single “Under Attack.” In it, he wove together synths, bright guitars, the occasional horn; his restrained vocals seemed to float over it all.
Critics praised his songwriting and the falsetto that had his mom asking who the woman was that had been singing with him. (That was all him, of course.) It wasn’t long before he’d released another EP, gone on tour with Haim and Little Dragon, collaborated with the likes of Cyril Hahn and Odesza, and pulled together a long list of indie collaborators — Antwon, Tei Shi, Rome Fortune, Junglepussy — for a mixtape.
Fans, though, are still waiting for an official full-length from Vidmar, and if it doesn’t seem as if he’s in any rush, it’s because he’s not.
“I never think about my music in terms of putting out a hit single or anything like that,” he says. “I always think about things as a cohesive work of art. When you’re doing that, you can’t write a song and produce it out and push it out real quick. You have to take time to think about the entirety of what something’s going to be and what a whole body of work is going to be. Sometimes that means you go through long periods of time sort of sculpting that, whatever it is.”
During the past year, Vidmar says, he’s been spending a lot of time writing and a lot of time in the studio, “so obviously new music is on the way.” But he’s cautious about saying too much about what that means exactly. The timing of the new album isn’t set just yet, and he doesn’t want to go too deep into what the new stuff might sound like.
Still, he says, if the mixtape was an opportunity to collaborate, this new album pulls him back into his own head — “mostly me on my own.” It doesn’t sound like his first EP either, he says. “Aesthetically, it’s probably very different than both.”
The inclination to innovate, to keep changing, is something Vidmar says he’s always felt. “That’s just what my goal is.” It’s particularly important, though, at a time when R&B influences can be felt almost everywhere.
“I don’t think the new stuff falls as much in that world,” he says. But, he adds, the entire music industry is crowded right now, it’s not just the scene he came up in a few years ago. “It doesn’t really matter what genre you are in these days. Everyone has access to so much music, and there’s so much stuff being pushed down your throat on Spotify or blogs or whatever it is.
“I think, in general, all I can worry about is doing stuff that I feel is innovative to me and in my journey.”
For now, Vidmar is focused on the short West Coast tour that’s bringing him to Rickshaw Stop on Friday, Sept. 2. People who come to the show, he says, will get a sense of where he and his music are headed. He’ll be playing bits and pieces of the new project as he tries to get a sense of what the music he makes in his bedroom sounds like out in the world.