Backstory: Guitarist Miles Van Blarcom started playing local gigs with Riverside, California, folk band The Union Drifters. In 2016, he went solo as Miles V., an indie rocker with a minimalist approach to songwriting that demonstrates less can be more. In just a few years, the 32-year-old Blarcom has risen among his music peers, stepping outside his own work to produce the track “Break Me Down” on B. Rose’s Closer to Me EP, along with Strip entertainer M3cca’s Latin pop single “Stars and Moons.”
Sound: “I’ve always been a sucker for really catchy choruses,” Blarcom says of his sound. “I grew up with all that pop-punk 2000s stuff like Underoath, Taking Back Sunday and Blink-182. But then I hear the British rock sound of Arctic Monkeys, Cage the Elephant and Catfish [and the Bottlemen]. All those worlds are blending into what I write.” Sure enough, “Come and Go,” Blarcom’s latest single, about a short-lived relationship with a woman he met in Europe, shares the structural DNA of Catfish and the Bottlemen’s “7,” reveling in the power of its own simplicity.
Finding a New Voice: “Singing has always been something I wanted to be good at,” Blarcom says. But a deviated septum robbed him of his confidence for years before he finally got surgery. Ten years ago, while still in The Union Drifters, Blarcom set out to challenge himself. “I did my first open mic in Riverside and I was scared sh*tless. I was sweating,” he remembers. “But that first performance was one of those milestones.” He’s been taking vocal lessons for the past five years, he says, eager to unlearn a lot of bad vocal habits. Several solo releases later, his work is starting to pay off.
Next Up: Blarcom has two singles set to release this spring, which will recall laid-back influences like Elliott Smith and Fleetwood Mac, he says. Catch him live with Michael Richter, Radical West and Sonia Barcelona, January 28 at the Usual Place.
MILES V. linktr.ee/milesvmusic
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