“We’re the Steely Dan of the twenty-first century,” Marzoni jokes of the mostly-studio project’s two-man core. “A friend told me that we sound like The National if they didn’t take themselves so seriously. I take it as a compliment.”

 

Former neighbors in the Bywater neighborhood, Marzoni and Gottshall met over a shared slice of key lime pie. Weeks later they were jamming together, discovering their complementary musical talents. Marzoni played bass guitar, keyboards, accordion and trombone in San Diego bands The Lawrences of Arabia and The Silent Comedy, among others, and had an extensive back catalogue of songs he’d recorded solo in New York and Minneapolis.

 

Gottshall, a guitarist in several New Orleans bands and sound engineer who recorded parts of Santigold’s Master of My Make-Believe, which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Dance/Electronic Music Album charts, was thrilled when he heard the tunes.

 

“While the songs have electronic elements, they still sound organic,” Gottshall says. “Arrangements on this album are lush and keyboard-heavy. The instrumentation changes, sometimes drastically, from song to song.”

 

Juice was released Jan. 17, 2017 on iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, and Bandcamp; listen to the first single, “Little Words,” here (and follow the band on Soundcloud, Spotify, Facebook, and Vimeo). On May 18, 2017, Shouts & Murmurs headlines the Mobile Museum of Art’s Live at the Museum series. Other tour dates are forthcoming.