“What can we do to get people off their fucking phones?” exclaims founder and frontman Luke Faillaci, explaining the mission behind Fai Laci, the band he founded and fronts. “And how can we give them something real and make them have a great time? That’s the most important thing we can do: Just communicate with our followers and let them know they fucking rule!” The Boston quintet — which also includes guitarists Anthony Cervone and Michael “Goldie” Goldblatt, bassist Cal Hamandi, and drummer Zack Putnam — have already amassed a grassroots fanbase thanks to their energetic, wildly cathartic live shows around the Northeast. They’ve seen a community coalesce around their inspired rock songs, with a quarter-million monthly followers and millions of streams despite, until recently, having no label, no publicist, and no manager. They’re proof that good tunes can still find their audience, and they’re working hard to bring others into the fold. “We’ve always been making music for ourselves, and we’re going to hold ourselves to that, because we know other people will want to hear it, too.”
Fai Laci are a band with a mission, and Elephant in the Room is the ideal vehicle to achieve it. Produced by Dan Auerbach and recorded at his Easy Eye Sound Studios in Nashville, the album blends the urgency of punk and the stomp of glam with the theatricality of classic rock, all bound together by the band’s sharp swagger and Faillaci’s boundless charisma. Especially for a debut, it’s confident and surprisingly diverse, full of brazen rockers and bruised-heart ballads. The band expertly traverses the psychedelic time and tempo changes of “Cure Upon the Hill” with the same grace and nuance that they bring to “Beautifully Boring,” a dreamily bittersweet anthem about navigating your young adulthood with your sense of self intact. “We never set out to make a certain kind of sound,” says Faillaci. “It takes us wherever it takes us. We got more into the rock side of things on the album, but we also wanted to have some really beautiful songs on it. We wanted to have something for everybody.”
That’s been the defining Fai Laci attitude since Faillaci founded the group. Working by himself and learning as he went along, he released two EPs and a handful of singles that he hoped might eventually make their way beyond his circle of friends.
Gradually, Faillaci brought players into the band, based more on personality than chops. “It was never about adding another guitar just to have another guitar,” he says. “It was about getting the right people. I knew they’d be a good fit for the band because nobody has an ego. We’re all pretty level-headed.” Currently, all five band members live together in a house in Medford, Massachusetts, where they can jam ceaselessly and record whenever inspiration strikes.
Fai Laci aren’t an explicitly political band, but they do see rock and roll as a subversive force: a battering ram for storming the castle, the glue that binds people together into a community that’s more powerful than any one person. It is, ultimately, a noble pursuit. “We’re trying to get people together so they can hang out and just talk to each other,” Faillaci explains. “So, let’s be as real as possible. Let’s keep hammering away at the stuff that makes a true difference to the people in front of us. We’ve proved on a small scale that we can do that. Now it’s just a matter of finding cool ways to do it on a larger scale.”
