PREMIERE: Van Goose Cook Up Trippy New Track “Wildstar”

When he’s not drumming for Marcy Playground, Shlomi Lavie is making music on his own terms.
PREMIERE: Van Goose Cook Up Trippy New Track “Wildstar”

When he’s not drumming for Marcy Playground, Shlomi Lavie is making music on his own terms.

Words: Scott T. Sterling

photo by Javier Ortega

February 15, 2019

Israeli-born Shlomi Lavie is what you could call “all over the place.”

After coming up in the Israeli music scene, culminating in playing drums on two albums with the band Habiluim, he moved to Brooklyn and joined Marcy Playground in 2008. Yes, that Marcy Playground, the ’90s alt-rock outfit best known for 1997 hit, “Sex and Candy.”

Lavie’s creative impulses birthed solo project Van Goose, inspired by post-punk, no-wave, and the early days of DFA Records.

Van Goose will release the band’s debut full-length, Habitual Eater, on March 1. Lavie name-checks an impressive panorama of artists as influences in the album’s press release, including David Bowie, Pet Shop Boys, MARRS, and film directors Jim Jarmusch and Jean-Luc Godard.

“I never felt like I ‘belonged’ in a certain scene,” Lavie added. “I like to keep my options open and be exposed to everything.”

The latest advance from the album, “Wildstar,” finds the artist in a reflective and psychedelic mood, the spacey and hypnotic track recalling early Kraftwerk and the quiet side of Flaming Lips.

“I was finishing up the album and felt like it needed one more song to convey the full picture that I had in mind,” Lavie revealed via email. “A certain type of emotion. I had an older version of ‘Wildstar’ lying around, very synth heavy, but it just didn’t click. I was looking for something more honest, minimal and exposed. So I said fuck it, set up the drums, mics and everything at home in my hallway, and laid down a new version in a day. I wrote the song to my wife. It’s a bit of a reminder to see through the rut involved in relationships and not let it kill the spark.”

Listen to “Wildstar” and check out the video made in collaboration with  up and coming animator Natalie Greene below.