From Nashville’s *repeat repeat, Hi-Fi Pop-Rock Made With Love

Moving is never fun. But have you ever done it while you’re under intense pressure at work and in the broiling heat of mid-July in Tennessee? 

That’s how *repeat repeat’s Jared and Kristyn Corder spent last summer — 12-hour days in the studio tracking their second full-length Glazed with producer-drummer Patrick Carney of The Black Keys, and every remaining waking hour hauling belongings from their previous place in East Nashville to their new one in rural Hartsville, Tenn. Jared and Kristyn have been married seven years and share guitar, keyboard and songwriting duties in the band, and despite the strain of that hectic summer, he insists they wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. 

“It was good, because it took us out of our heads. We didn’t have time to overthink. We’d wake up at 6 at the new house, drive an hour into town to our old house, load up the van, go to Patrick’s, record for 12 hours, go to the new house, unload, go to bed and do it again.”

Downtime doesn’t come naturally to the Corders. “We’re not good at hanging out,” Kristyn admits with a laugh. With the May 31 release of Glazed (their second album for Dangerbird Records, following 2017’s Floral Canyon) closing in fast, the duo’s management encouraged them to take a vacation first. I meet them at Waffle House in Berry Hill the morning before they skip town for a couple weeks.

Over bottomless coffee and heaping plates of hash browns, they outline their itinerary: first, an artist’s retreat in the mountain hamlet of Thomas, W. Va., then on to Canada to eat their way across a Toronto neighborhood known colloquially as Vegandale. The Corders are vegans and as passionate about animal rights as they are about music. Their 12-acre Hartsville property, which is about an hour northeast of town and which they’ve dubbed Polychrome Farm, doubles as a refuge for rescued special-needs pets.

They’ll be back home in time to throw a local record-release party on Sunday at 3rd and Lindsley. Come fall, *repeat repeat will open the Midwest and Southern dates of the Keys’ co-headlining tour with Northwest indie titans Modest Mouse, including a show at Bridgestone Arena on Oct. 1.

The seed for the Carney collaboration was planted two years ago, as Kristyn explains. “Our attorney sent Patrick an Audiotree session we did, [saying] ‘Check these guys out. I think they’re going to stumble upon a hit in their career.’ ” 

Carney, who has produced recordings for artists as diverse as dancey pop group Tennis, soulful singer Jessy Wilson and the now-defunct local psych-rock outfit Turbo Fruits, liked what he heard of *repeat repeat. They cut the single “Head On,” which went so well that he offered to produce and play drums on the whole record — a moment that Jared, a big Keys fan, is still floored by. 

“It’s not like we don’t see the value in what we’re making,” he says. “But it meant a lot for someone like him, who has the keys to the door, to open it for us.”

As they approached the end of the madcap moving-and-recording marathon, hard-earned R&R was in the Corders’ sights. “We had already given Patrick thank-you notes, gifts, everything,” Kristyn says. But the drummer-producer threw the couple a last-minute curveball, calling them back to the studio to rewrite lyrics to “Woke With You,” Glazed’s penultimate track. Jared says it felt like walking at graduation only to find you failed a class and have to repeat it.

“In the past, I’d have been like, ‘It’s good enough,’ ” he says. “Patrick’s like: ‘No. If it’s worth putting out, it’s got to be the best. We can do it better.’ He was listening to our songs more closely than we ever had by that point.”

As much praise as the Corders pile on Carney, Glazed feels more like a meeting-of the-minds collaboration than a mentor-and-protégé project. The record draws on ’60s psych, ’90s alternative and early-Aughts garage rock — the band cites The Kinks, Green Day, The Raveonettes and Alvvays as personal faves — and any one of its 11 exercises in high-fidelity, hook-heavy power pop could be a single. My picks are the post-punkish “I Could Hear My Heart Beating,” with its bobbing, weaving male-female vocal interplay and gutsy guitar solo, and “Fortunate One,” a bubbly, grungy midtempo jam that evokes a pair of 1995 cult classics: Weezer offshoot The Rentals’ Return of the Rentals, and Murfreesboro legends Self’s Subliminal Plastic Motives.

Smart, catchy, radio-ready rock of this ilk always has its place. Even so, it’s not something many bands in Nashville, or anywhere, are attempting in 2019. In an age when cynicism is king, *repeat repeat’s hopeful sound and outlook makes them an easy band to root for.