Localized: Scott Lippitt

Scott Lippitt will be headlining April’s Localized showcase, debuting tracks from his newest album alongside co-collaborators and local indie favorites Sean Mena and Bly Wallentine. It will be a pop-rock-experimental-indie-psychedelia extravaganza at Kilby Court on April 14; a variety show hosted and performed by everybody cool in Utah for just $5. This event is sponsored by Riso Geist. Doors open at 7 p.m. and music starts at 8. Buy tickets online here!

“It started by realizing that there is just so much good, local music,” says indie-pop singer-songwriter Scott Lippitt of his latest project, Me, You and the Avenues. Having only performed as a solo artist until this point, Lippitt decided to dive headfirst into the waters of collaboration for his fourth album, featuring a different SLC musician in various capacities on each of its 12 tracks. “I have a bit of a ‘go big or go home’ mentality,” Lippitt says, “and there’s a lot of that same passion in the music scene around here.” The album will be showcased at April’s Localized show and will be released on streaming platforms April 12.

“I remember when Scott started posting his music. I really appreciated his creative process; he’d do a song every day, randomly generating a word and writing a song.”

“I didn’t know anyone when I really started pursuing music here. I had switched from an engineering job and was undergoing a total life change,” says Lippitt. During this time, Lippitt purchased a cassette tape by local artist Nicole Canaan at 3hive Record Lounge, which he describes as a life-changing experience. “I was shocked and blown away— it was totally national-level, world-level talent,” Lippitt says. When he began work on the collaborative album, Canaan was the first person Lippitt thought to ask. Their collab on the album, “Modern Devices,” is an ambient, shoegaze track with folk-indie vocal stylings, emblematic of Me, You and the Avenues’ sound as a whole.

Avenues is an album of buzzy indie-rock with an experimental, atmospheric, Midwest emo tilt—each track has its own signature style, yet the project still feels unified. “Each song has rotated as a favorite of mine,” Lippitt says. Working with popular acts such as Ambedo, Rachael Jenkins, Yuccas and Maren Gayle, Lippitt says that the project allowed him to improve his craft as a musician and as a songwriter. Lyrics were written in patchwork, conversational style; melodies were fl owing in stream-of-consciousness practices—this was an album that allowed each performer to feel challenged and involved in the process of its creation. This ethos guided Lippitt’s collab with indie-pop vocalist Josaleigh Pollett on “Is This a Good Time,” whose responding lyrics added surprising dimension and conflict, according to Lippitt.

Working with contributors Bly Wallentine and Sean Mena on Avenues was incredibly creatively inspiring, says Lippitt. Wallentine’s pump organ, incidentally tuned to the angel number A444, and Mena’s electric guitar work were particularly influential. Through email exchanges of guitar solos, outros, chorus lines and more, Mena and Lippitt’s track, “I Wrote a List,” came together through a true meeting of the minds where all the “small details” were attended to, says Mena. Mena and Wallentine will be opening for Lippitt at April’s Localized.

Wallentine recalls what first drew them to Lippitt: “I remember when Scott started posting his music. I really appreciated his creative process; he’d do a song every day, randomly generating a word and writing a song. Through COVID, I had a similar process and it was really cool to see someone else doing that,” they say. An ethos of word-by-word writing guided Wallentine and Lippitt through “Avocado,” Avenues’ final track. This is what made the collaboration so fun, says Wallentine—“You’re listening and responding to what’s coming up here, what’s happening, what jokes want to be told as beautiful music.”

“Each song felt completely different in every way. We recorded all kinds of ways, in all kinds of places. It was a big exploration.”

Lippitt officially describes the project as “an exploration of avenues—avenues of the mind, heart and life.” Elaborating on this idea for SLUG, he says, “Each song felt completely different in every way. We recorded all kinds of ways, in all kinds of places. It was a big exploration.” Through this exploration, Lippitt investigated the creative avenues each individual artist was interested in, and the resulting tracks provide a variety of emotions—from heartache to love to gentleness to technological anxiety. In this way, the album works to tie the places we find ourselves in to the way we find ourselves, which is most often through community. Follow Lippitt on Instagram at @scott_lippitt_music.

Read more about past Localized performers here:
Localized: The Medicine Company
Localized: Graveljaw Keaton