You are here and so am I
Maybe millions of people go by
But they all disappear from view
And I only have eyes for you
The 1950s were a fever dream of juke joints and soda fountains thick with smoke, chrome, and longing. Voices floated from street corners: The Flamingos, The Penguins, The Chordettes, The Cadets. Their harmonies, as sweet as soda pop and as strange as fevered youth, seeped into the bloodstream of popular culture. Punk, post-punk, and bubbly synthpop artists would seize these relics years later, bending them into new shapes, at once mocking, mangling, and celebrating them. Every decade, some restless soul has returned to those spectral refrains to see what secrets they still whisper. Now Candy Whips take their turn, carrying the flame into the circuitry of the present.
Wendy Stonehenge, best known for glam-rock outfit Glitter Wizard, created Candy Whips as a vessel for sounds too unruly for his main band. When the stages went silent during the pandemic, he took inspiration from Mute Records’ Daniel Miller and Frank Tovey, whose late-1970s “virtual band” Silicon Teens reimagined pop through circuitry. In that spirit, Stonehenge drew Kraftwerk’s robo-pulse into Oakland bedrooms, soldering punk and synthpop into a gleaming, improbable alloy.
“I’ve always been a big oldies fan,” Stonehenge says of Moonlight, his new EP of ‘50s standards. The tracklist is a roll call of jukebox ghosts: Gene Chandler’s Duke of Earl, The Penguins’ Earth Angel, Marty Wilde’s Bad Boy. He begins with The Flamingos’ number I Only Have Eyes For You, a song already drenched in dream, now rendered uncanny through filters and sequencers.
“This is probably my favorite doo-wop song and the first I recorded for the album,” he explains. “I feel like it really sets the tone for the whole EP… When I was a kid, it was always on the radio. These days, oldies radio doesn’t really exist, so you have to actively seek it out.”
The version is deeply Lynchian. One can imagine this cover looping in Blue Velvet while Dorothy Vallens stares at the ceiling fan, or echoing across the red curtains of the Roadhouse. The harmonies are intact, but they are refracted like moonlight seen in an oil slick. It feels less like a cover than a portal, an old American ballad wired into a dream sequence. Though many jaded modern bands might be tempted to smother such songs in sarcasm or irony, Candy Whips keeps faith with the tender romance of the original version of I Only Have Eyes For You…an act that feels almost rebellious in itself in these troubled times. And perhaps that’s fitting, for were the Cold War years really ever free of trouble themselves?
“My choice of tracks is more of an intentional thing,” Stonehenge continues. “I’ve noticed that I’m particularly drawn to doo wop and old vocal groups… A lot of these songs are so ingrained in us that it’s easy to overlook how creative and weird they were in their day…. I think I’ve brought some of that weirdness to the forefront.”
Elsewhere, Marvin and Johnny’s Cherry Pie spins into a mechanized midnight dance; The Cadets’ Stranded in the Jungle leaps with staccato jolts, its slapstick vaudeville turned surreal cabaret; Mr. Sandman becomes a lullaby for infants dreaming in circuits; Earth Angel is processed into a mechanized serenade, a robot’s prayer to love.
“If I could turn young people on to this old music, that would be amazing,” Stonehenge professes. “It sometimes bums me out that this stuff isn’t as ubiquitous as it was in my childhood. This era is the well that most good music sprung from!”
And so Moonlight arrives: a séance where candy-striped nostalgia shakes hands with the uncanny. The Flamingos once sang that the world could be falling apart and still “I only have eyes for you.” In Candy Whips’ hands, the sentiment becomes stranger, sharper: love as an old broadcast transmitted into the future, fragile, eternal, and humming with electricity.
Moonlight is out now via Kitten Robot. Listen to Moonlight below and order the album here.
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