SHARPIE SMILE - The Staircase

Sharpie Smile's debut album has one
question for you: is your heart good
enough to take The Staircase?

Sharpie Smile is Dylan Had-
ley and Cole Berliner. They met

in 2015, a pair of musically-adept
nonconformist teenagers, forming a
songwriting and performance duo.
Writing initially for a project called
Kamikaze Palm Tree, with Dylan
on drums and Cole on guitar, they

produced two albums of thorny, ear-
wormy art-rock. While continuing to

play shows and write, there was some
session work with other acts (Cate Le
Bon, A. Savage, Tim Presley's White
Fence). And then a shimmering new
direction came into view...
For Sharpie Smile, that direction is

up. The Staircase is a lush and ener-
gizing contemporary pop record, scaling an ambitious gradient of

minimal/maximal electronic production and deep feels. It's a dreamy
and ethereal trip through something (you're not sure what yet), on a
radiant melodic raft. Reality is breaking and rebirth is happening, one
piece at a time-essential questions deconstructed and pieced together
again. Like scanning a new x-ray image of yourself.
Finding is losing something else; there's the shadow of 'goodbye'
here, too. When Dylan sings "There is nothing I won't miss" on "Love
or Worship," we feel broken up-but if the breakup is with the old
way of life (it is), then getting over the hump will provide its own sweet
reward. Sharpie Smile's passage there is one of sensuous breaths and
serpentine soul-terrain, as Dylan's blue vocal melodies drift glacially
through a luminous wilderness of synth keys, guitars and percussion
beats, cutting the melancholy milieu of New Romantic pop in sharp
new relief.
On The Staircase, Sharpie Smile ascend through waves of sound
art in a sophisticated musical craft all their own. Inspired by SOPHIE,
100 gecs, Oklou and other insane futurists, they allow the feeling of
discovery to free their evolution, whenever needed. Their collaborators

help facilitate and guide their astonishing transformations: The Stair-
case was engineered and produced by Cesar Maria, with additional

engineering by Spencer Hartling, additional vocal engineering and
production by Cairo Marques-Neto and mixing by Mikey Weiland.
You're in the eye of the storm. A refuge from the unrelenting, where
the journey to clarity can be glimpsed, accessed and shared. Take The
Staircase-we'll see you at the top.

Vinyl release of Sharpie Smile - The Staircase. Released through DRAG CITY and available on LP.