Biography
Overlake formed as a New Jersey trio whose sound fuses the catchy melodies of indie pop with the expansive guitars and pounding percussion once central to classic shoegaze groups. Guitarist and vocalist Tom Barrett and bassist and backing vocalist Lysa Opfer assembled the band in Jersey City during the first months of 2012. Their initial collaboration took place inside WJ & the Sweet Sacrifice, where the two abstained from the smoking habit shared by the rest of that lineup and instead used the others’ cigarette breaks to develop original musical sketches. Those sketches eventually accumulated into sufficient material for the pair to commit to recording an album. Barrett played guitar and sang on the debut release, 2014’s Sighs, while also overdubbing its drum parts himself. The search for a permanent drummer who grasped their aesthetic proved lengthy until Barrett and Opfer encountered Nick D’Amore at an early-2015 gathering, at which point the group’s chemistry aligned. With producer Tom Beaujour at the helm, the completed trio tracked their follow-up, Fall, issued in May 2017 through the established New Jersey independent imprint Bar/None Records.
Albums
