There’s a carefree demeanor to the latest Eyedress LP, Let’s Skip to the Wedding, that belies the intense life changes its creator, Filipino musician Idris Vicuña, experienced while making it. Born in the Philippines and raised in the US from the age of six, Vicuña spent his formative years living in Manila, making music in a band called Bee Eyes before creating his solo project Eyedress, a homophone of his first name as well as a reference to his previous band. As Rodrigo Duterte assumed his Trump-like presidency in the Philippines and mounted a violent extrajudicial war on drugs, Vicuña, a sensitive Cali stoner at heart, returned to America on tour and was “too paranoid to even go back,” eventually settling in Los Angeles. Surprisingly, the turmoil of the move is largely absent from Let’s Skip to the Wedding; instead, the album consists of mellow indie grooves about everything falling effortlessly into place.
Vicuña has released albums under the moniker Eyedress since 2013, signing with XL Recordings to release his Supernatural EP, the follow-up to his debut Hearing Colors, a collab with Skint Eastwood. Vicuña says XL “threw me in the deep end,” even putting him up in a London apartment for a year. “They had me opening these crazy big shows, and I was young at the time, still 22, really shy, and I was like, playing with my laptop on stage and singing. I didn’t really know what I was doing,” he recalls. XL dropped Eyedress, forcing Vicuña to self-release his next few albums. “I personally wasn’t ready for all that, but it was a learning experience, and I met a lot of great artists,” he says.
One of those artists was Scott Herren, aka Prefuse 73, who put him in touch with another UK label, Lex Records., who released 2017’s Manila Ice, 2018’s Sensitive G, and now Wedding. “After that things were kinda set – all I had to do was focus on making good music, you know, being genuine. It’s gotten me to be able to live in America, and that’s always been my dream ever since I was in the Philippines,” Vicuña says. “I knew nothing would happen with my music if I stayed there. Since I [moved to L.A.] things have just gone really well.”
For one thing, Vicuña fell in love with his partner Elvia, and her soothing presence is deeply felt throughout the dreamy, diaristic meditations that populate Let’s Skip to the Wedding – in the video for the title track, they raid a bodega and dance beneath a desert sunset in matrimonial garb; in the Bobby Astro-directed clip for “Last Time I’m Falling in Love” she’s a heavily pregnant mermaid. An animated version of the couple fights zombies in “Can I See You Tonight?,” a track Vicuña wrote about the heady first days of the romance; ghostly backing vocals float through the track like longing itself.
In L.A., Vicuña found another soulmate of sorts too, in guitarist Zahara Jaime. Though Eyedress is mostly Vicuña’s solo effort, Jaime plays lead guitar “Can I See You Tonight?” and has become an integral part of the band’s live show. The two met at an Eyedress gig, bonding over shared Filipino roots, and later met up again by chance in New York, where they spent a night jamming. Not long after, Vicuña invited her on the road, and since then, the two have written numerous songs for a side-project called The Simps, which they plan to begin releasing later this year. They incorporate songs from both projects into their energetic shows, taking a punkier approach to playing live that often ends in mosh pits and mayhem – Vicuña even fell off the stage once. “I made a few punk songs when I lived in Manila – I was really angry at the time. And ever since I made those songs, whenever me and Z play them, shit just goes fucking off. Sometimes we’ll try to record songs that can invoke that kind of mood and sometimes we just have some sad chill shit. There’s no rules to it, it just falls into place,” Vicuña says. “We were meant to make music together. Z to me is like my little sister, but she be teaching me shit too.”
“I think when I met him and we started recording it really made me look at music in a different way, like you could just sit down at home and make it yourself, you don’t necessarily have to go into the studio and spend like $250 a day,” Jaime says. “Him showing me that you could literally open up your laptop and write music, that was just like a different world to me.”
Jaime had played in a variety of garage punk bands throughout her teens growing up in Highland Park, but as a queer woman of color, didn’t feel like she fit in. “At the time it was a really male-dominated industry, with Burger Records and Lolipop Records which was like, primarily white. And I would get shows with some of those bands but was always the opening act, and I was always treated kinda weirdly,” she remembers. She saw firsthand some of those labels’ seedier sides, including grooming young fans and gentrifying her neighborhood. But meeting Vicuña felt different, and he allowed her the freedom to riff without mansplaining. “Idris has introduced me to a lot of other musicians that I feel have the same sort of background as me. I expanded my horizons. It’s nice to see people coming up that aren’t a typical white male band.” This, she says, is key to breaking damaging cycles of predatory behavior. “I think we should be more inclusive in music,” she says simply. “Why do guys that abuse their privilege get to have a platform?”
In many ways, Let’s Skip to the Wedding offers a clear alternative where Vicuña leads by example, embracing his sensitive, wholesome side, even managing to embody the feminine when he slips in to high falsetto on a song called “Trauma.” “I feel like the album shows guys can still be good,” he says, and that his principals revolve around a concept he calls “Team Loyal.” As Jaime explains, “Team Loyal is like, you just have this small circle and everyone treats each other with respect, everyone’s right morally, we’re just very close knit. Cause L.A. feels like a jungle.” In the midst of turbulence and change, Vicuña isn’t afraid or ashamed to wear his heart on his sleeve. On Let’s Skip to the Wedding, he nestles his most tender tendencies in a haze of slinky dream pop, but its overriding thesis shines through – love is all you need.
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