With ‘Gimme 5!’ we take a peek into the collections of artists we admire. The premise is simple: artists WE like share five records THEY love.

Mark your calendars for August 23rd – the release date of one of this summer’s most anticipated albums: Chime School’s sophomore LP, The Boy Who Ran The Paisley Hotel. Two teaser singles have already dropped (Give Your Heart Away and Wandering Song – video below), and fair warning: they’re likely to send you straight to Slumberland Records’ pre-order page. The hit potential is off the charts, and having hailed the band’s self-titled debut as a modern indie pop classic, I’m running out of superlatives for this new offering. Simply put, this is jangle pop at its zenith.

While we eagerly await the full album, let’s stoke the excitement by having Chime School mastermind Andy Pastalaniec (also of Cruel Summer, Seablite and Pink Films) share his primary influences for his “Paisley Hotel” LP. Prepare for an enlightening journey through the sounds that shaped this promising release.

Andy Pastalaniec: “One thing I love about pop music is how one song can be a hundred songs. There are endless decisions about rhythm, instrumentation, and production that can completely transform the same couple of chords and melody into something entirely different.

The first Chime School record went through a couple iterations before eventually landing a bit more in a drum-machine driven, Sarah records territory. It’s a sound I love, but frankly, it was the only sound I was able to achieve at the time that sounded any good to me!

When it came time to record The Boy Who Ran The Paisley Hotel, the experience I gained from the first record, and from playing with the Chime School live group, inspired me to reach for a bigger, more developed sound and dive into some of the other territory that inspired the project from the beginning.

A few of these will come as no surprise to anyone already familiar with Chime School, so my apologies to anyone who expected deep cuts only, but here’s five records that were on my mind when I wrote and recorded The Boy Who Ran The Paisley Hotel.”

1. Primal Scream || Sonic Flower Groove 
“Ever since I discovered the Byrds as a teenager, the way they actually sounded never quite matched their monumental presence in my mind. So when I first heard Sonic Flower Groove by Primal Scream, it was a revelation. This was the sound I heard in my head when I thought of the Byrds! Everything is cranked up, the 12-string guitar sounds bigger than any I’d ever heard, and the overall production is just really huge sounding. I was always blown away by the fidelity of a lot of indie records from the ’80s. In my imagination there must have been some glut of recording studios that were reasonably cheap, at least compared to the way it is now. There’s a song on the new record, Say Hello that was one of the first songs I wrote for Chime School. I never attempted a recording of it for the first record because I couldn’t get it to sound the way I wanted, but I was finally able to do it justice this time.”

2. Teenage Fanclub || Songs from Northern Britain – “Start Again”
“I’ve gotten some hassle for saying this is my favorite Teenage Fanclub record, but it’s the truth. It also happens to be the first Teenage Fanclub record I ever heard. Similar to the first Primal Scream LP, the first time I heard this record I thought THIS is the sound I think of when I think of Big Star! I also remember it being late November, when the weather was just starting to turn cold– my favorite time of year– so naturally this album clicked right away. I think album openers are incredibly important. The opener on Paisley Hotel, The End was written as a bit of a lyrical counterpoint to Start Again, as it’s one of my all-time favorite openers.”

3. The Aislers Set || The Last Match
“I’ve been a fan of the Aislers Set since my college radio days when someone put Friends of the Heroes on a mixtape for me. Terrible Things Happen was my favorite for years after that, before finally being edged by The Last Match. There’s an entire demo version of my first LP with live drums instead of drum machines, and The Last Match was on constant rotation at the time. I was never able to get anywhere close to that sound so I went in a different direction. I’m not quite going for it on Paisley Hotel, but records are kind of like movies or novels to me in terms of their ability to transport you to a place or feeling. Some of my favorite musical spaces to inhabit are autumnal or wintry, cinematic or romantic. In that sense I was aiming for Paisley Hotel to take me to a similar kind of place as The Last Match. It’s kind of crazy to fast-forward twenty odd years from those college radio days to find I’m releasing records on the same label as this legendary band, part of a continuum of Bay Area indie pop that they played such a huge part in cementing.”

4. Various Artists || Folk Rock And Faithfull: Dream Babes Volume Five Dream Babes Vol. 5 (compiled by Bob Stanley for RPM Records)
“As a “geriatric millennial,” I bring tales of a time before you could go to the internet to easily discover all manner of obscuro-pop history. In the mid-2000s when I was a college radio DJ, compilations were totally crucial, whether they were OGs like Nuggets or No New York, or the seemingly never-ending wave of compilations that packed the stacks at KDVS. Any of them could be your gateway to a new musical obsession. It was during this time that the bedrock of my pop fandom was laid: 1960s Brill Building, Gold Star/wrecking crew pop, UK 60s pop, French “ye-ye,” and US girl groups. These Dream Babes comps were a favorite at the time, and there were a bunch of them. I can’t promise you’ll love every song on these comps (they’re archival after all!) but a number of the tracks on this one sent me in a direction that lead to where I am today. When I was searching for a palette for Negative Monday from Paisley Hotel, I went back to this comp for inspiration. A couple of picks would be Gillian Hills’ Tomorrow Is Another Day and Angelina’s Wishing My Life Away, but this comp was also where I first heard actual Jackie DeShannon originals, Vashti Bunyan, and that all-time great first Nico single. Some bonus kismet: I had no clue who Bob Stanley was when I was 21 and discovering these comps, so it’s kind of crazy to me how his compilations inspired me as a young youth, and how a number of Bob Stanley-adjacent groups would prove so influential to me much later on.”

5. East Village || Hotrod Hotel (Slumberland Records reissue) – “Freeze Out”
Someone suggested it might be too obscure to list East Village as a reference point for the vibe of Paisley Hotel. So if you’re reading this, and you don’t know about East Village, go buy this record immediately. Slumberland made it easy for you with an expanded reissue of Hotrod Hotel, a compilation (originally released by Summershine in 1994) of their singles for that label, and Jeff Barett’s Sub Aqua and Heavenly labels. Since I mentioned the echoes of Bob Stanley in my previous pick, I chose Freeze Out as the focal point from this comp, which was originally issued via Bob Stanley’s Caff Recordings 7-inch record label (CAFF 1!). It’s difficult to downplay the influence this band, and in particular Paul Kelly’s guitar playing had on me when I was working on Paisley Hotel. It was a total honor to meet Paul and Debsey in 2022 when Seablite (another band I’m in) played the Chickfactor 30 festival in London with their group Birdie– another huge influence. Bucket list type stuff!

Finally, because it was so hard to keep this to 5 albums, here’s some honorable mentions of other records that I had in mind when I was making Paisley Hotel:

Felt – Forever Breathes the Lonely Word
The Go-Betweens – Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express
Field Mice – For Keeps
McCarthy – Banking, Violence and the Inner Life Today
Razorcuts – The World Keeps Turning