>> More than anything else, Oh Boy is a celebration of teenage fandom and friendship. Each song is “about” something else, of course: a betrayal, a breakup, new love, parenthood. The usual stuff. And we’re hardly teenagers.

Yet somehow Massage feels like the kind of band you were in back in high school. We were friends first. We all had other lives. We started playing music almost by accident. (Michael wanted to learn drums; Alex wanted to relearn guitar after playing bass in the Pains of Being Pure at Heart; Andrew and David invited themselves to their second practice.) We made a playlist of songs we loved — hundreds of them — long before we recorded anything: the Feelies, the Go-Betweens, East River Pipe, the Lemonheads, the Breeders, Flying Nun, Sarah Records. Alex and Andrew started writing songs the way kids do—to sound like their heroes.

No matter how we tried, though, the songs — half Alex’s, half Andrew’s — came out sounding like “Massage”: scrappy, catchy, minimalist, and sincere, with Gabi’s harmonies elevating each track. Every Monday after practice, we went to Jay’s Bar for beers and poutine. There was no point to any of this. We were just having fun. Then one day we realized we were a band.

Oh Boy is our attempt to capture this easy alchemy on tape — the strange magic of a bunch of amateurs coming together, finding their own wavelength, and making something out of nothing.

We couldn’t have asked for a better partner in crime than our pal Jason Quever of Papercuts, who recorded us on random weekends over the course of two years. We hope the result sounds as loose, low-key, idiosyncratic, and ultimately indelible as the bands that inspired us — the ones you already know, and the ones that are still just teenagers goofing off in some suburban garage.

“​​A couple months ago I came across “Oh Boy,” the warm, feathery second single by Los Angeles-based indie pop band Massage, and never really turned it off. It’s the title track from Massage’s recent album Oh Boy, a tender and unassuming record that reflects their stated interests in the Feelies and Flying Nun Records,as well as band member Alex Naidus’s experience playing in the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. But Massage are also a band of adults with other commitments, and it shows inpastoral pop music that is grounded in true-to-life detailand plaintive without feeling like a downer.” - Spin

“The debut LP from L.A.’s Massage ingests forty years of jangled history and reconfigures the pieces into hazy, radiant indie pop that touches the shores of England ’86 as often as Australia ’18. … Oh Boy is stuffed with hooks and coated in a lacquer of honeyed fuzz. The record reads like a case study in pop, stitched by studied hands and pressed crisp as linen. … They scoop up nods to The Go-Betweens, Sarah Records and Flying Nun. They pour over Feelies’ riffs like they were scripture. It’s clear that the band were having fun with the idea of sketching out songs and their joy is damn infectious. They chew on every inch of Oh Boy with the zeal of artists who are sustained by the sparkle of their songs.” - Raven Sings The Blues

“Let’s dispense with the reference points as quickly as the band does: the songs share DNA with golden-era Sarah Records and earlier groups like Stockholm Monsters, but those influences are just a starting point. Throughout Oh Boy, Massage spin twinkling guitars and soft-focus vocals into indiepop gold. ... Summer is at its peak, and Oh Boy is peak summer listening: airy, winning songs that sucker-punch on first listen.” - Bandcamp Daily, Essential Release

900 copies on Black w/ Milky Clear swirl vinyl
100 copies on Beer colored vinyl (Monorail Music exclusive)