Out now: Matt Costa’s 'Santa Rosa Fangs'

photo: Pamela Littky

Critically acclaimed Southern California-based singer/songwriter Matt Costa’s fifth full-length album—and first in five years—Santa Rosa Fangs is out now on Dangerbird Records and available for purchase/streaming at http://radi.al/SantaRosaFangs.

Costa is set to tour North America throughout the spring and summer, including a hometown record release show at The Troubadour in West Hollywood on June 5. See below for a list of performances; tickets are available for purchase at http://mattcosta.com/tour.

Additionally, Costa launched a series of digital mixtapes in the lead-up to the release of Santa Rosa Fangs, each playlist corresponding to a leg of the drive up the California coast as played out by the protagonists who appear throughout the new album. Listen to “The Road to Santa Rosa Fangs” at https://www.mattcosta.com/.

The video for the single “Sharon” was filmed at Montana’s iconic Sip N Dip Lounge, a tiki-and-mermaid themed bar at the O’Haire Motor Inn that dates back to the early 1960s. Watch/share the video at https://bit.ly/2L5Epmv.

Costa also premiered the album’s first single “I Remember It Well” and “Time Tricks.” Watch/share the album trailer at https://youtu.be/Xh0EyQ13vPg.

Produced by Peter Matthew Bauer (The Walkmen) and Nick Stumpf (French Kicks), the songs on Santa Rosa Fangs center around a fictional young woman named Sharon, her two brothers Ritchie and Tony, and their story of love, loss and coming of age in California, replete with long distance love affairs and nostalgic romances.

Rather than setting out to create a specific narrative, Costa began noticing a theme in the new songs as he wrote them: an unconscious embodiment of the surroundings in which he himself had grown up.

“I’ve interwoven my own stories into a fictional idea of what Santa Rosa Fangs is, from my own time spent living in Northern and Southern California and years driving up and down the coast, seeing the landscape and where life can pull you within one state,” Costa explains. “It’s the characters’ story and my story, too, contemporary but still tortured by the past. It’s a window into a time period but spoken as if it’s the present. The beauty of love and loss doesn’t have a date on it; it’s timeless.”

Santa Rosa Fangs follows Costa’s 2013 self-titled effort. In the early 2000s Costa was on his way to becoming a professional skateboarder when he was derailed by a serious injury. He changed his focus to his songwriting and an early demo found its way to No Doubt’s Tom Dumont, who ultimately produced Costa’s early recordings. In the time since Costa’s last full-length record he has kept busy by sound tracking the award-winning documentary Orange Sunshine and independently releasing a series of EPs.

Track listing:

1. I Remember It Well
2. Sharon
3. Grudge
4. Pacific Grove
5. Santa Rosa Fangs
6. Time Tricks
7. Coming Around
8. Ritchie
9. Phosphorescent Letter
10. Windy Smile
11. Real Love
12. I Remember It Well #2

Tour dates:

May 19
Philadelphia, PA
Boot & Saddle*

May 21
Vienna, VA
Jammin’ Java*

May 22
Brooklyn, NY
Rough Trade*

May 23
Cambridge, MA
The Sinclair*

May 25
Toronto, ON
Longboat at Great Hall*

May 26
Ann Arbor, MI
The Blind Pig*

May 27
Chicago, IL
Schuba’s*

May 28
Milwaukee, WI
Shank Hall*

May 30
St. Paul, MN
The Turf Club*

June 5
Los Angeles, CA
The Troubadour†

June 7
Carmel, CA
Live in the Vines

July 7
San Francisco, CA
Café du Nord†

July 9
Bellingham, WA
Wild Buffalo†

July 10
Seattle, WA
Tractor Tavern†

July 11
Vancouver, BC
Biltmore Cabaret†

July 12
Portland, OR
Doug Fir Lounge†

August 16
Dana Point, CA
Bluff Park at Salt Creek Beach

* with Elizabeth & the Catapult
† with Katie Toupin (ex-Houndmouth)