Brandon Can't Dance

Brandon Ayres emerged as a homegrown hero within Philadelphia’s tight-knit D.I.Y. community, issuing a string of digital-only albums filled with home-recorded lo-fi pop before securing a label contract and delivering his first proper full-length in 2017. Raised in the middle-class suburb of Drexel Hill, he began creating music at age eleven alongside Josh Phillips in the duo Rasputin’s Secret Police. Discovery of the city’s experimental Faux Fetus Collective at sixteen pulled him into the local D.I.Y. world, an experience he described as one that “changed my life.” Working with rudimentary equipment, he started writing and tracking his own loop-based material at home, launching the first of numerous Bandcamp-only releases in 2007 under the name Brandon Can’t Dance. Those tracks proved eclectic, with most running under two minutes and moving freely among nineties-style indie rock, melodic falsetto synth-pop, and additional approaches, frequently laced with sardonic lyrics. He kept recording alongside the equally active Rasputin’s Secret Police, which had joined the Faux Fetus Collective, and played countless shows both solo and with the group. Over the ensuing decade he became a fixture on the Philly D.I.Y. circuit while employed as a security guard and tending to his infirm grandmother, with whom he lived together with his mother and sister. Wider notice arrived largely through association once fellow scene participants such as Alex G, Eskimeaux, and LVL Up gained broader recognition. Alex G named Ayres as a key influence during a 2015 interview, a reference that drew additional attention after Frank Ocean later praised Alex G. London’s Lucky Number label signed Ayres in 2016 and compiled selected tracks from the LXVE II album into the LXVE EP. Graveyard of Good Times became his first physical release, led by the single “Smoke and Drive Around,” whose video showed Ayres performing exactly those actions. He promoted the album with a U.S. tour shared with Alex G and LVL Up.