Before you even listen to I Dreamt I Was Awake, the new EP from Late Again out today, a glance at the song titles reveals a sense of irony and humor: \u201cAll My Exes Moved to the Countryside,\u201d \u201cCrazy or Stupid,\u201d and \u201cIf You Have A Bridge (I\u2019m Buying).\u201d<\/p>\n
For Late Again, the nom de plume of Brazilian-born, Brooklyn-based artist Rafael Melo, it\u2019s all part of a collection of tunes he calls \u201coptimistically cynical.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI try to explore several topics, from the lack of belonging and craving for human connection \u2014 the fact that I am a foreigner living in New York City and all that entails \u2014 to the shit show that is the political world right now. I tried to do it in a lighthearted way for many reasons. I think humor is a great mechanism for lowering people\u2019s guards before you share a message with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lyrics are cloaked not only in humor, but also in hazy, dream-pop textures. He says the confidence he\u2019s gained over the course of making previous EPs, as well as better connections and resources in the music community, have strengthened the foundation needed to make a song like \u201cEvery Time I Take Sudafed,\u201d a spoken-word track.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you have a melody supporting you, it\u2019s so much easier to say whatever you want,\u201d Melo says. \u201cYou have a shield. When you\u2019re just talking into the microphone, it\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, am I really gonna wake up in the morning, go to the subway, go to a studio, and turn on a mic to record me saying this specific sentence? Is it really worth it?\u2019 It really makes you vulnerable.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I don\u2019t think I would have been able to write a song like this and put it out on the first EP. The other thing I think changed a lot is the fact that, because the project grew so much, I was able to connect with a lot of talented people, like the band that is playing with me on this EP.\u201d<\/p>\n
He continues: \u201cI think every time I release something new, it builds up my confidence a little bit. Especially for my first EP \u2014 I still am incredibly self-aware, but I guess it was even worse. I\u2019ve been a musician ever since I was 15. I had this little band back in Brazil. We toured, and it was this whole thing. And like most musicians, I had this frustration arc where I realized, \u2018OK, I don\u2019t think I could have a comfortable life making the kind of music that I want to make in Brazil, where there\u2019s not really an industry for that.\u2019 So I remember that before I started Late Again, I kind of distanced myself from putting music out there for like five years or so. I had this moment a lot of artists do, but when I decided to move to New York City, I was like, \u2018You know what? I\u2019m going to take this seriously now. I\u2019m gonna make this work.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the first EP, there was a lot of overthinking. Those songs were sitting there for over two years. And after you start putting shit out there, it just gets easier. I\u2019d say, especially if you pay attention to my lyrics, I have the feeling that I\u2019ve been a lot more honest with myself. And in this EP specifically, I\u2019m trying to experiment with being more bluntly descriptive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Melo says \u201cmy natural habit is definitely my acoustic guitar,\u201d and during our video conversation he shows me his guitar made by the Brazilian company Giannini. \u201cI\u2019m immediately drawn to bossa nova chords when I pick it up. Whenever I\u2019m sad, I just grab this nylon-string guitar and play, and maybe I\u2019ll try to play myself to sleep or something. I\u2019d say 80 percent of my songs start that way: I have a melody in my mind, and I try to figure out the chords with my nylon-string guitar.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, for his last few releases, he pivoted: \u201cI was like, \u2018OK, what if I start with a synthesizer this time?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor songs like \u2018If You Have a Bridge (I\u2019m Buying),\u2019 I had that sequencer melody in my mind. So I went straight to the synthesizer to record it. It\u2019s one example.\u201d<\/p>\n
Melo released the first Late Again EP in 2024, a year before his life shifted with the release of 9 Kings, a video game he made with childhood buddy Andr\u00e9 Young. The success of the game has allowed him to put more time and resources into his music.<\/p>\n
In October, he\u2019ll launch his first European tour with dates in Germany, France, and the UK. On Oct. 28, he\u2019ll play at Gold Diggers in LA before a hometown gig at Baby\u2019s All Right in Brooklyn on Nov. 28.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before you even listen to I Dreamt I Was Awake, the new EP from Late Again out today,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-338107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}