Getting to Know Daydream Review
By Reegan Saunders
In October, I had the chance to catch up with Elijah Montez, the face of Daydream Review. After moving from Austin, TX to Chicago, IL, he says he took a new approach to the music world, which you can find out more about below.
Daydream Review has released two singles in the past few months, including a dreamy disco track called “Yesterday and Tomorrow,” and they have a psychedelic EP on the way.
What do you love most about Chicago and the music scene?
I just like that a lot of people seem to be willing to lift up other people, which is really nice. I think a lot of the DIY scene in Chicago is musicians that are fans of other musicians. It's really cool to see how, sometimes, someone will start having something kind of ‘pop off,’ and other people are really supportive; it's really nice. And there's also just a wide, versatile range of genres, which is really cool. Like, I come from Austin; I write psychedelic music — but that's pretty much all anyone writes in Austin — so, it's nice to see that kind of variability in a scene and to hear as many voices that you get to hear in Chicago.
What musicians around Chicago do you listen to?
My friend, Zac Bron, has a project called Breether and he does psychedelic synth-funk, which is really cool. I've gotten to know Paul Cherry, and he's obviously an incredible musician; we shared a music space for a couple of months. There's a lot of people I kind of know through the grapevine. [Like] Wyatt Waddell; he's a really amazing musician. He has a voice like no other person I've ever met.
Who would you say has inspired you regarding your music? At one point you said that Brian Wilson was one of them.
Yeah, it is still the case, if only because the way that [Wilson] arranges his music is still very much like how I arrange my music. You'll record a little snippet of something and it might not go anywhere, but sometimes, it's the seed for this really lovely, lush little thing that you create. So, in the sense of, like, arranging music and creating different like textures within music, Brian Wilson is definitely a big influence.
And, I mean, there's also other, like, big psychedelic musicians that I really enjoy. I think, at this point in time, if you don't credit both The Beatles, in terms of historical psychedelic genre making, and Tame Impala, in terms of contemporary genre making in the psychedelic genre, I think that you're maybe lying to yourself a little bit.
So, talk to me about your music writing process. What's that like?
Well, I work a full-time job, I have a graduate degree in architecture, and I am also diabetic, so it's really important that I have healthcare. A lot of my time, generally, will go towards just working. But once you get off work, you're exhausted, so [I] just find small bits of time [to write] during the weekdays. And then, like, if my wife and I don't have plans on the weekends, then I'll spend a good chunk of time just goofing around with a chord progression. And I do tend to fixate on certain chords and certain melodies and try and expand on those.
I kind of mentioned this when I was talking about Brian Wilson, but there's a propensity in the way that I write to not write a whole song all at once. Sometimes, it'll be a 30-second snippet, and then I'll put it away. I'll sit on it for a little bit, and then maybe a week later, I'll come back to it. And the other thing that's really important — I don't know if I mentioned this — but I am the sole writer of Daydream Review. So, it's just me in a room, figuring out the things that I really liked.
I think that a lot — in terms of production and mixing and all that — I think that it's really key, if you're writing psychedelic music, to kind of layer up and create, you know, that classic Phil Spector “wall of sound.” By utilizing that large texture of sound, you're able to create this really lush quality in your music. And so, a lot of times, in terms of the chords or melodies that I use, it's sometimes two, three, or four things playing that same chord progression. And we have an EP coming out — I don't know when, but we just finished mastering it — but I've been working on the LP since I finished those songs and that is probably quite a step higher than what I'm planning on releasing for the EP because it's realizing that I like to write in a certain way and beginning to capitalize on it.
What can the audience expect from the EP?
So, some of the songs on it actually have been released, which is kind of funny because it's like, you heard this song before, but you haven't heard it quite like this. Because again, when I released some of these songs initially, it was done in such a way that I was still, like, figuring out how I like to record, which is a whole different thing.
There's a good bit of genre exploration. I like to dip my toes into shoegaze and funk music, and stuff like that. But, I mean, it's all kind of in the psychedelic package. Like, a little bit of exploration, but it does stay true in some of the genre. It’s still gonna sound like a Daydream Review song, it's just gonna maybe be a little bit more open to not sticking to a single genre.
Okay, so, I also really love the album art on all of your singles. They’re so cool. Where do they come from?
The EP art and the latest single was done by this amazing graphic designer named Julia Fletcher, who's based in New York. But, before that, I was actually the one doing all of the album art and design stuff, because I have two degrees actually in architecture. And when you do that kind of career path, you have to be able to pick up at least a smidgen of graphic design, just to be able to present your work in a somewhat reasonable fashion. But I will say that the work that Julia has done is far better than my own. I think the only thing that comes close is maybe the album art for a single that we put out in May called “Blossom,” and that was after I'd already seen what she was going to do. So, I was like, maybe I'll try and do that nice way of handling the layout of the art itself. The way that she has approached it has been a really nice change, I think.
Finally, if you could describe your music as a color, what color would that be?
I'm kind of hopping between a cotton candy pink or a sky blue. I'm sorry, I can’t pick just one.
Out of those two, if you want to pick one, that's probably accurate for how you see it.
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