Hip, Hip, Hooray! It’s The Umbrellas!

In 2021, San Francisco’s The Umbrellas released their self-titled debut and had a breakout moment in the indie scene with their modest Indie Pop posturing, teaming up with bands from labelmates Papercuts to Fucked Up and showing that they can confidently make humanity better through their collection of smartly written and sincere songs. One listen, and you get just how important this music should be in your life. The emotion. . . the simplicity — it’s not just digestable, it’s the fabric of your own personal soundtrack.

A few years later and The Umbrellas coalesced energy and passion into a brilliant sophomore release. Fairweather Friend showcase iconic power pop and maritime punk on their own terms. This is an album that is confident, contemplative and the perfect companion experience. Matt Ferrera and Morgan Stanley’s hopeless romantic prose pierces the heart and may be some of the most endearing songs you will hear. Say hello to your next best friend and get lost in a collection of thought-out and well crafted songs leading with “Three Cheers!” and ending with the jangle sunset pop of “P.M.”

Did the band name come from the Renoir painting?

It actually didn’t, but Morgan’s parents insist that she looks like the girl with the red hair pictured in the foreground of the painting. They even bought a print of it to hang in her childhood bedroom, ha!

This is some Umbrellas’ lore at this point, but it is said that the name came from us just sitting around in a living room pointing at various household objects. Or maybe it didn’t. Honestly, we don’t really even know anymore.

Going back to the early days and the band’s development, what elements of San Francisco became an influence to the band’s inception?

We used to always say that we’re a maritime band. Something about a historic city by the sea is so beautiful to think about and feel inspired by, so some of our early songs often reflect that. San Francisco gets written off as a corporate wasteland under the public eye, but its working-class art scene is clearly vibrant and inspiring, and it always has been. Our inception was catalyzed by all of the fantastic jangle pop-adjacent bands emerging out of the techie rubbles around 2018, following the garage rock wave that came and went. A few of us also worked in various record stores/music venues in the city, which all kind of amounted to collecting under the same “umbrella”: fighting the good fight the best way we know how, with our music and art.

Since the band’s debut, I love how the vocals naturally complement each other. Was that an instantaneous connection or did that take time to develop?

Thank you! Honestly it felt pretty instantaneous. Morgan wasn’t necessarily a guitar player when the Umbrellas started, but she was a singer. So when her and Matt, a self-proclaimed Beach Boys fanatic, started working on harmonies within the songs things just kind of came together really naturally. Nowadays our harmonies feel much more intentional and we talk about specific intervals we want to hit and why, but that process came to us with practice and time.

I read that the debut was polished from live performances. How did extensive touring through 2022/23 inspire Fairweather Friend?

We realized a lot of people thought we were much more quiet than we actually were when they saw us live. Lots of people would come up and say,” You were a bit loud!” – Stephen Pastel. Haha! It felt like we were getting a bit pigeonholed into a certain type of “earnest” or “twee” genre, so this was a reaction, if anything. We just wanted to honor the more aggressive, ramshackle-yet-harmonious nature of our live performances. We started working on that when we recorded our “Write it in the Sky” 7-inch, and we were super happy with how that came out. So we decided to work on it even more in recording this record by expanding on recording techniques.

With Fairweather Friend, the band allowed more space to let creativity flow. Going from recording in San Clemente to recording the new album in Matt’s basement, the DIY approach has really played in your favor. But what changed between the debut and Fairweather Friend, and what did you learn?

We learned how to properly record drums to really capture Keith’s melodic drumming abilities, and that was huge for us. We also felt more familiar with our gear, which helped with deciding on which guitars to use for what solo, etc. We’re super comfortable with the self-recording process that Matt has really structured for us. We’re all working full-time while making music, so it’s important that we can be flexible with recording efficiently, and feel comfortable in our spaces where we make the music at the same time.

One of my favorite lyrical lines in Fairweather Friend is “Watch your dreams become an echo down the hall,” from the song “Echoes.” Like many songs on this album, there is something charming to the way that you present reality. How do you define circumstance versus observation and how does that impact your songwriting?

Lovely question. We all write a lot of the lyrics together, so in a way they represent all of our perceptions of reality, which I’m sure are similar but different in little ways, simultaneously.

“Toe The Line” is a nice unexpected addition. What elements of this album stand out to you?

The juxtaposition of aggressive drums and melancholy lyrics versus softer, jangly guitars, and how they showcase our dynamics as a band.

Tell me more about those leather/pleather pants in the “Three Cheers” video?

They’re real and they’re spectacular.

What did you learn from the making of this album?

That there’s not as much of a rush to record as you might think as a recording musician. We can be more intentional with our production in taking our time.

What now? What goals do you have?

Keeping up with the momentum that we’ve made, with making more music and playing new places. Embracing it all…