Favored Nations

Favored Nations is an eclectic, trans-Pacific three-piece band bridging land and sea, creating entrancing music from studio bases in both Australia and Los Angeles. The catalyst for the band was born through a chance meeting on a night out in Los Angeles between James Curd and singer Morgan Phalen, previously of New York indie rock group Diamond Nights, and contributing voice to Justice’s psychy second LP 'Audio Video Disco'. James could tell straight away that Morgan was a visionary genius, and an instant bond was formed. Back at his adopted home in Australia, Curd recruited his friend and talented multi-instrumentalist Surahn Sidhu to help lay down a bed of music to complement Morgan’s vocals. They worked feverishly over the summer in a coastal pad by the Great Ocean Road and created unique, distinctive songs that seemed to write themselves. The trio joined creative forces to result in a musical and personal chemistry that has quickly evolved into a serious band, despite obvious geographical borders. Cutting a few very promising demos in early 2012, Favored Nations - in reference to the international interconnectedness of their lives - has continued to develop as a group. The trio enlisted the praiseworthy additional production of Joey Waronker, renowned for his work with Atoms for Peace, M83 and Beck, to help tease the nuances out of their wide-ranging and refreshing musical ideas. The EP then found its way to the mastering desk of Brain “Big Bass” Gardner whose warm engineering clout has been immortalized on the defining albums of Michael Jackson, Donna Summer and George Clinton to name but a few. The result is a sound marinated in AOR, nu disco, and sun-soaked tenacity. Warm vocal melodies, bouncy baselines, understated disco-tinged guitar lines, perhaps a handclap or two, and some therapeutic synth work. Their music works wherever vocally led pop confections are welcome: the pool, the radio, or the convertible. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.