PATIO SHOW: The Mango Furs

185 Clingman Ave,Asheville NC 28801

26 August, 2022

Description

PATIO SHOW: The Mango FursPresented by The Grey Eagle and Worthwhile SoundsALL AGES The Mango Furs – 5PM DOORS / 6PM SHOW – ALL AGES – OUTDOOR PATIO SHOW – LIMITED PATIO SEATING IS FIRST COME FIRST SERVED THE MANGO FURS Led by frontman, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Chris Higdon, The Mango Furs are a psychedelic band for the modern world, swirling the vintage influences of 1960s garage rock, surf music, and other trippy sounds into contemporary records like 2021's Passages. This is textured, transportive music, as warm and woozy as the sunbaked Gulf Coast shoreline that ran beside Higdon's hometown. Raised in coastal Florida, Chris first fell in love with rock & roll while sitting behind the dashboard of his father's truck. "My dad would listen to Allman Brothers or Jimi Hendrix and play drums on the steering wheel," he remembers. Before long, Chris was playing rock songs of his own, earning write-ups in the local paper while still a teenager. Along the way, he also spent some time living with his grandmother, an eccentric painter whose unchecked creativity inspired her grandson. "She dressed crazily and wasn't afraid to do her own thing," says Chris, who named Mango Furs after a brightly-colored item from his grandmother's closet. Passages arrives on the heels of Mango Furs' 2019 debut, Inner Migrations. Higdon wrote more than 40 songs for the project, eventually choosing a collection of 10 tracks that mixed neo-psychedelia, shoegaze, chillwave, and rock & roll into the same track list. The result is an album grounded not only in spacey arrangements, but sharp songwriting, too. It's a record that casts a mood while delivering a message, with Higdon writing about the various passages in his own life. "I'd gone through some big life changes, having lost my grandmother and becoming a father," he says of the creative process. "Time doesn't stop, though. It just keeps moving, and it's up to you to fulfill your dreams and chase down your goals. No one's going to do it for us. Passages is about moving through those transitions in your life." Atmospheric and anthemic, Passages brims with synthesizers, electric guitar fuzz, snippets of field recordings, echoes of reverb, and plenty of melodic spark. There's a roomy reach to songs like "Be the Wheel Not the Road" and "Heart Ghosts," which Chris credits to the longtime influence of Pink Floyd. "I watched Live From Pompeii years ago, back when the world was still coming out of the grunge era," he remembers. "At the time, the radio was playing a lot of in-your-face music, but Pink Floyd was different. Those guys laid back and only spoke up with their instruments when it was needed. It taught me a lot about learning to shut up, listen, and let other things happen." Years later, Chris Higdon is still listening. Passages is the latest chapter in a story that's still unfolding, capturing a prolific songwriter reaching his peak as a producer, bandleader, guitarist, and musical auteur. It's headphone music at its most compelling — evocative, ethereal, and immersive, designed to pull the listener into the album's lush soundscape — performed by a band whose songs have been heard on MTV shows, Netflix programs, and concerts alongside headliners like Liz Cooper & the Stampede. "Music should be about sincerity and intention," he says. "It shouldn't be about trying to 'make it.' To me, 'making it' is just having the ability to make music. I've learned that, and maybe that's why Passages has a sunnier color to it than what I did before. It's uplifting. It's feel-good music."