“Touring with Wisp will be so great. That kind of tour allows us to play these larger rooms… which is exciting, but nerve-racking [laughs],” jokes Louie Baello, primary lyricist/vocalist and one-half of Los Angeles duo Dream, Ivory, with brother Christian Baello serving as primary producer and other half. Dream, Ivory are gearing up for a month and a half of dates providing direct support for Wisp, Natalie R. Lu’s nu gaze project, which will have the two acts (in addition to openers aldn) at Union Transfer this Saturday, August 23rd, for the second night of the tour.
However, the duo do have a little bit of experience playing massive black box rock clubs, with Dream, Ivory opening some of the very same spaces for our phriends bôa this spring. During a recent phone chat, Louie tells me that not only is he a big fan of bôa, but that he’s super grateful for the opportunity to play these huge rooms for the first time: “When I was growing up, that was the dream, but I still get nerves every night before the show [laughs]. But the nerves leave right away, by like the second song.”
The brothers – first generation Filipino Americans who were encouraged to pursue music from a very young age (“it wasn’t a choice,” Louie has joked) — are touring behind their sophomore LP, When You Come Back I Have So Much To Tell You, which dropped last month. The album is the follow-up to About a Boy, the group’s 2022 debut full-length, itself the follow-up to a number of singles and EPs, some of which got quite big, with one particular 2018 single boasting more than 420,000,000 streams on Spotify. “With About a Boy, we were more kind of caught up trying not to make a song like ‘welcome and goodbye,’ our biggest hit, so we were intentionally more in-your-face, brasher,” Louie tells me of Dream, Ivory’s approach to their first album.
Louie explains that When You Come Back I Have So Much To Tell You has Dream, Ivory returning to their roots in a sense, but with the organic evolution of all the things that they’ve learned and done along the way. And he tells me that, thankfully, fans have seemed to not only enjoy the new songs, but be engaging with the music with more depth than ever before: “With this album, the general perception is sick! People will be like, ‘My favorite track is track 3!’ or track 5, whereas before we didn’t know that they had even heard the album.”
Dream, Ivory released 6 of the 14 tracks of When You Come Back I Have So Much To Tell You as singles prior to the album hitting shelves, all of which have official videos and official visualizers (in addition to an official video for “Sometimes,” which dropped the same day as the album). And the band pride themselves on creating all of their own artwork, videos, visuals, and merchandise designs. Louie admits that it’s largely Christian who handles those duties, but he tells me he very much appreciates that doing it all themselves allows them to always embrace their current mindset or particular side of themselves. He also says that he takes notice when other artists are able to do the same: “The 1975 are really good with generalizing each era, even the aesthetic and graphic design of their tour ads!”
While the sounds of Dream, Ivory are most often placed in the world of shoegaze/dream pop, their bio also reveals a deep love of Gorillaz and surf rock. During our chat, I ask Louie if there are any sophomore releases that he especially loves, and he tells me that there is one that proved to be a major influence: “Before we even did Dream, Ivory, a huge band that inspired us was Beach Fossils — What a Pleasure, which was an EP, but their second release — was a huge inspiration. We found that when we were 14 or so, and we were like, ‘Dude, we need to start a band!’”
Although Louie and Christian aren’t personally acquainted with Natalie R. Lu just yet, they are friends of Wisp guitarist Max Epstein, also the man behind Photographic Memory. And Louie says Dream, Ivory are prepared to hit the road with the band and match their vibes: “It’s gonna be so awesome! Because we’re touring with Wisp, we are focusing more on our harder songs… and some classics, and some things we’ve never played, too, so a little something for everyone.” After this tour wraps in early October, Dream, Ivory play a festival before flying back to the Philippines to visit their parents, who moved back last year. In addition to that, Louie says the band will spend, “the ‘ber’ months” (which he loves) taking it easy and working on whatever’s next: “We’ll just be writing songs and keeping it chill.”
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