NYC Scene Report – Otracami, The Nude Party, & MOVIE MOVIE

This week’s NYC Scene Report features Otracami readying her Runoff, The Nude Party showing they can “Walk That Walk,” and MOVIE MOVIE staring at a “Photograph.”

* Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Otracami, aka Camila Ortiz, will be releasing her sophomore album, Runoff, on March 20th via Figure & Ground.

For Otracami, the album sees her fully embracing her current residence, rather than her childhood home of California. “The stuff I used to make felt like it was much smoother, and that kind of feels like California – there’s this open, flat, uncanny smoothness to everything. New York feels murkier, there’s more friction out in the open, just in the way that people relate to each other. I think that made the music more angular and expressive.”

She continued, adding that while writing Runoff, “I was trying out leaving for the first time – people, and jobs, and situations with family. It was real trial and error – sometimes that really worked and felt liberating, and other times I had to turn around and go back. It was a period of big experimentation.”

The lead single from Runoff is the wonderfully delicate “Please,” which is, in fact, quite pleasing. Give it a listen.

* The Nude Party are ready to “Walk That Walk.”

The latest single from NYC via North Carolina seven-piece band’s upcoming album, Look Who’s Back, “Walk That Walk” is what I imagine Lou Reed would’ve sounded like had he been from the south. 

The album as a whole, which is due out this Friday, came about thanks to an insane recording session.

“We pretty much blitzed into the California desert in the middle of a tour, and spent five days recording and partying with our friends Michael Rault and Pearl Charles,” the band explained in a statement, “We’d track ‘til the early hours of the morning, fall asleep, cook some eggs, then start up again.”

They continued, adding, “Look Who’s Back also comes at a big turning point for us. It’s our first independent studio release since leaving New West Records, and coincides with us all moving from the sleepy Catskills Mountains down to New York City. I hear in these songs that sense of straddling the city and the country, kicking out the jams freely again.”

The Nude Party will be hitting the road for an extensive tour beginning March 5th in Washington DC, that will run through May 3rd in Charlotte, NC, and you can hear them “Walk That Walk” right here.

* A photograph can capture any number of memories, and with MOVIE MOVIE’s latest single, titled “Photograph,” the band is looking at a snapshot that’s sparking realizations about a past relationship gone awry.

A picture is supposedly worth a thousand words, and while the lyrics of the beautifully somber “Photograph” aren’t quite that lengthy, it’s an incredibly relatable post-breakup song that you’ll want to spin again, and again. Heck, it may even inspire you to break out an old photo album, or scroll through the pictures that are in the deepest recesses of your phone.

Taken from the rock band’s upcoming 10-inch, Coming Attractions, which will be out this Friday via Soundflat Records’ sublabel Topsy-Turvy Records, you can check out MOVIE MOVIE’s “Photograph” right here.

For more of the best of NYC’s indie music scene, come back next Wednesday, and check out the archives for previous columns.