Inspired by a cherished childhood memory of visiting a Blockbuster store with shelves of movies to choose from, Dolo Tonight, the bedroom/indie pop project of New-Jersey based artist Jonas Elias Rindner, set off to recreate the same magic with his debut album, DVD Rental Store.
With the goal of giving listeners the immersive, spontaneous experience of picking up a random, pictureless CD and bringing it home without knowing what it holds, Dolo Tonight created freely and authentically without anything holding him back. Dolo Tonight prioritizes self-expression and eccentricity in every track, showcasing what it means to use imagination as a driving force for storytelling.
Featuring the singles, “Live Your Life,” “Hate You Know,” and “Hotel On Your Heart,” Dolo Tonight’s debut album, DVD Rental Store, was released on Oct. 3, with each track having accompanying music videos. In an interview with Melodic Magazine, Rinder opens up about his creative process, behind-the-scenes details, decisions for production elements and more.
How do you feel about finally sharing DVD Rental Store and having people listen to it?
It’s fucking awesome. I’m so excited. Me and all my good friends worked really hard on this, and it feels to me like something that is actually me, which I think for a long time I felt a little misrepresented with my music. I felt like I didn’t quite get the thing that I was trying to do, which is make these awkward pop songs — just make a song that’s like, you can listen to it and be like “this is cool,” but it’s not just generic pop music or generic alt music. I wanted to add some bit of myself into it and I think I’ve been trying to do that for like seven years and I finally met up with the right creative collaborators and put myself in the right situation to make that all happen.
The lead single “Live Your Life” started this new era for you, one that has no boundaries and defies expectations. Why did you decide to make this the first released single off your debut album?
I think it was a good way to give people the expectation that a lot of fun music was about to come through. I think before that, I prefaced some of that stuff just with the earlier releases, but it was going down a more solemn path on some of the other songs leading up to that. And I didn’t want people to be like, “Oh, I’m gonna tune into this project and just hear really sad music.” It covers a lot of the different range that you hear throughout the project. So we have the fun, surfy indie stuff, like that Dayglow, Group Love-y stuff. But we also get a funny, weird skit in the beginning where that’s an actual voice memo I just left my friend on his phone. I was in Denver, and I was like, “I got my fucking goldfish. I got my Marlboro Red,” and I was just talking, he’s like, “we’re putting that in the song.”
It just was built like a single to me. And that’s just something that I said — let’s put a good foot forward and put it out and show some range and just give people a little expectation of what they’re going to talk about, or what we’re going to put forward.
You also released a music video to go with ”Live Your Life,” which you co-directed alongside Kalik Osbourne. Can you share the story behind this music video and how does it add to the message of the song?
So every song on DVD Rental Store has a music video. That’s something I wanted from the beginning. I wanted the project as a whole to kind of feel like you go to this DVD store. I remember when I would go to Blockbuster as a kid and it was fucking awesome. I would get my Bottle Caps, and I’d fight with my brother over what movie to pick, and I’d take it home and sometimes it would be shit and sometimes it’d be dope.
I wanted it to feel like you just picked up a random thing at the DVD rental store, brought it home and played it. And that’s what you’re experiencing. This album is this collection of different things.
Partly, I watched Be Kind Rewind, which is a trashed Jack Black film where he magnetizes a video shop, and then he has to redo all the videos homemade. So I wanted this DIY, shitty, cheesy action thing. And then I was just becoming obsessed with the tokusatsu, they’re so cheesy, it’ll be a dude in a fish costume like “I am the fish man.” And so I was just like fuck it. Let’s just come up with characters. Weirdly enough, at that time, this girl I was seeing got pink eye. And as a joke, I was like, “oh, dude, we should make a villain called Pink Eye.” So we created a villain called Pink Eye.
Your second single,“Hate You Now,” dives into a post-breakup realization you had that led you to make a final decision about how you feel about this person. It features these unique vocals where you combine a raspy voice with shouting. Where did the production for this song come from and why include such unique vocals?
I have like 10,000 voice recordings on my phone that we were just playing through when we were making the album. I really like the band Spoon, so I was like, I want to make this “Spoon” thing about it and we thought about how the drums would boom, boom, boom, bat and then he just started playing some piano and I think it just kind of came out.
Originally it was a really sad song. It was totally low-key and down and we were doing it on a really sad, tape-affected guitar. And then I was like, “Dude, what if you make a song where you feel really bad for the bad guy, like the guy who’s like, creeping on someone.” I want the audience to be like, “Damn, that guy’s life kind of sucks. He’s not all that bad, even though that’s the person you kind of hate, because it’s ‘Dude, what are you doing? Like you broke into this girl’s house and like you’re fucking stalking someone,” or there’s this whole skit in the middle.
Your latest single, “Hotel On Your Heart,” is based on the metaphor of “building this hotel on someone’s heart.” What does this metaphor mean to you and why use metaphors as a way of storytelling in your music?
Dude, the crazy thing is that song happened in maybe 15 minutes. It was maybe an hour to completion and then we just spent weeks tweaking little things, but the thing itself happened really quick.
It’s so easy to be like, “I want you to be my girlfriend” in a song, which that’s actually not a bad concept. But, I think I was like, “how do I express this level of infatuation and dedication that I feel?” And I was like, “Oh, if I could build a hotel on their heart I would literally sleep in it. Like, I would live there. I would live on this person, I want to be fused with this person.”
I went in for the session that day and it just went down, and I was like, “damn, that’s one of my favorites” just because it was so fast, and that’s usually a good sign when you can just make something straight from the brain, right? The faster you can get out the creative juice, I think the more it translates to people listening, because it’s just a raw, immediate feeling. It’s not overthought, and it’s not this, like, “Well, how do we say I like you in a cool way?” It was just like, “let’s just fucking do it.”
So diving into the album itself, the concept of having an album based on a DVD rental store is pretty unique. Where did the album’s concept come from and why make this your debut album’s theme?
Yeah, I think it’s so weird because I kept running into this problem where I would overthink a project. I wanted to make this project way back called The Day Parade and I had all these characters and it was where this guy goes out to this place in his dreams called The Day Parade, where he escapes in his head at night. I was trying to fit the song into the concept.
So instead, with this one, we just made a bunch of stuff. And I think I called my mom and was just talking to her about, “oh, you remember when we would go to Blockbuster and stuff?” and and then I think I was laid up at night, at 2am I started recording this voice memo on my phone, “DVD rental store.” All the songs are part of this movie that plays out, because we had already finished most of the music or the writing, I should say, not the producing and the recording, but the writing was done. Then the concept kind of just came in randomly.
I feel like a lot of the skits we had already worked into the songs just worked in that, and fermented into that kind of universe anyway. I wanted to tell a story, and I think that playing it out like a movie was cool and I like to think of a lot of my songs as pieces of a movie. I just don’t know what movie it’s part of but it feels like that to me a lot when I’m making music. It’s kind of a weird similarity, I guess, between filmmaking and songwriting. I just was creating a story, any medium of storytelling.
It seems like you had a lot of creative freedom while writing and producing these songs. What was your personal favorite track to write and bring to life?
Oh, man, maybe “Hotel On Your Heart,” maybe also “Weatherman,” though that one is a nice one. It feels like grandma’s house, it’s a total different kind of vibe than the rest of the project, and it’s a little more sad or somber.
I love everything, man. It’s so hard to be like, “this is my favorite,” because I think they all serve a different purpose contextually. But if I had to pick the banger, I can’t do it. They’re all my little babies.
I totally understand that. I mean, it’s hard to kind of separate them when they’re all a part of a project.
Yeah, they rely on each other. So, you can listen to them on their own. But like, the real magic happens when you play them through. So I think that we put a lot of thought into the order and the storytelling and the arcs, and the way that emotions would feel and you can’t end on a happy note. “Two Pens” is a big favorite of mine, though. I love that one. That’s so much fun.
Your music is claimed to be a part of this genre called “awkward anti-pop.” Can you explain why your music falls under this category and why you decided to pursue this sound?
I think there’s been a long lineage of people who have contributed to this over the years. I think a lot of it started with outsider music, which is weirdly adjacent to alt music. But I think the idea of it is just normal pop song with subversive lyrics and something that makes it a little special and more outsider-y for people who are just awkward and weird.
It doesn’t need to be like “we’re partying all night until the sun comes up.” It can be like, “I accidentally threw up on your couch. I’m so sorry.” I think there’s this creative freedom that people are craving to hear and that I’m craving to create, where you’re not necessarily just saying the normal stuff.
It’s really, it’s not for everybody. I think it’s designed to be for everyone through an easy listening and pop sensibility standpoint — you can listen to it, but you might be just like “why did he say that? What is he talking about? Why is there a skit in the middle of the song?” I think pop kind of restricts you sometimes, so it’s anti that, and it’s awkward, just because of the rich history of outsider music and these people in the alt space who really brought forward weird lyrics.
I read that you take pride in being authentic and letting your unfiltered self shine in your music. How do you use your personality to make your music unique and to connect with your audience?
I think specifically, a lot of it is in the way I present my vocals. There’s this thing that takes a really long time to learn, some people get it really quick, but for me, it took a while to learn in music which is how to deliver your lyrics in an authentic and meaningful way. So, I could tell you “my dog died” [bluntly], or I could be like “my dog died” [with a dramatic voice]. There’s a big difference in the delivery of both of those statements. It’s like acting. It’s one of those things that is like, “oh, I bet your dog died, and that sucks.”
It’s something that might be sub-contextual to the listening experience of a normal kind of like… if you’re not obsessed with music and thinking about all that stuff. But I think either way that stuff comes forward into the end product, and it makes it more me, or me or you, if it’s an artist. But yeah, it’s about putting literal pieces of yourself and mannerisms and words into it in the way you’d say it in real life, or the way that your friends would expect to hear it out of your mouth.
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