THE FUTURE IS NOW
48 | Rolling Stone | RollingStoneAus.com Ju ne, 2017
SOUNDS LIKE:Funky, exuberant
blues-rock as imagined by four
young adults barely old enough
to remember when Bill Clinton
was president
FOR FANS OF: Alabama Shakes,
Elle King, Lenny Kravitz circa
“Are You Gonna Go My Way”
WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTEN-
TION: The New Respects are
the odd Nashville-based band
whose members didn’t move to
town in hopes of making it big,
having grown up in and around
the city’s vibrant Christian
music community. Comprised
of singer/guitarist Jasmine
Mullen – daughter of successful
Christian/gospel singer Nicole C.
Mullen – alongside her cousins,twin sisters Lexi (bass) and
Zandy Fitzgerald (guitar) and
their brother Darius (drums), the
foursome have been onstage
for years, including serving as
background dancers for Mul-
len’s mother when they were
teenagers. They’ve also been
playing music in some configura-
tion for some time, but really
hit warp speed upon picking up
electric instruments and honing a
fuzzed-out blues-rock aesthetic.
The band are already signed to
a Universal Music subsidiary and
recently released their five-song
debut EP, Here Comes Trouble.
They’ve been road testing the
music opening select shows for
Switchfoot and hitting the roadfor a brief tour with Robert Ran-
dolph & the Family Band.
“We went from zero to a hun-
dred in no time,” acknowledges
Zandy. “Sometimes you feel
inadequate, like there’s people
who’ve been doing this for years
and we’re still trying to figure out
sounds.”
“I still feel like we’re like the
J.V. squad that got thrown into
the varsity game or something,”
adds Darius. “They look at you
like, ‘Fitzgerald, you’re in!’ and
you’re like, ‘What? I’m just on the
bench!’”
THEY SAY: “We weren’t really
allowed to listen to music outside
of Christian music, so hearing
Chuck Berry for the first time, orEric Clapton, it could have been
a new artist to me, because I
knew nothing about them,” says
Zandy.
“The nice thing about us being
so sheltered was that it forced
us to have to create new things,”
agrees Darius. “Whereas people
[who] grow up listening to
certain drummers and they play
that way, I only listened to gospel
stuff and I can’t do any of that
stuff, so it’s like, ‘Well, I gotta do
my own thing!’”
HEAR FOR YOURSELF: The
slinky, hypnotic single “Money”
combines a propulsive drum
break with Fiddler on the Roof-
style musings about the pitfalls
of wealth. JON FREEMANThe New Respects