The first watch from Los Angeles based indie duo Only Bricks. Entitled “Smile, It’s Over:)”, the track marked vocalist Anne DiGiovanni’s last day at her full time day job.
“‘Smile, It’s Over :)’ ” is our swan song for everyone who’s ever raged against corporate America,” Anne says. Featuring 90’s inspired guitar riffs, shiny pop punk melodies, and unapologetic spunk fused vocals, the song is the perfect anthem of freedom, while taking listeners on an enthralling musical roller coaster. The music video is a vibrant collage of scenes featuring the duo, with Anne transforming into a mermaid who is living it up in a “pity pool” of her former co-workers’ platitudes, finally having found her own voice.
Indie pop duo Only Bricks is us: lead vocalist Anne DiGiovanni and guitarist Joseph Lewczak. Married in 2017, we gave birth to our debut EP Foundation in Santa Monica, California in early 2018 – not the grandchild our parents wanted, but hailed by Vents Magazine as the “perfect California indie pop record.”
Our music feels like the rock, pop, and dance songs we cut our teeth on, with unapologetically melodic hooks and uplifting energy for days. On nights and weekends in our second bedroom studio, our songwriting mostly circles around different ways of painting the same heartache or lovesickness, but occasionally we get to something that’s never been said in quite our unique way: I am fresh outta love, let your loving fall apart around me, why don’t you go put on your big girl shoes?
Like The Vamps’ song “Risk It All” that inspired our name (“For you I’d risk it all / I’d rather crash, I’d rather crawl / then never have your love at all / with only bricks to break my fall”), we put it all out there in love, life, and music.
Only Bricks released five singles in 2021, including a single and video for their song “Big Girl Shoes”, which received tremendous praise, garnering media attention in Earmilk, Popwrapped, 1stDayFresh, among many others. Earmilk called the song “[an] intense . . . bubbly track” and the video “fun yet impactful.” 1st Day Fresh found it to be “an empowering and inspiring message on the fight for women’s equality wrapped up in [the duo’s] signature upbeat, playful, and clever pop style” while the video, directed and produced by an all female and non-binary crew delivered “shimmering visuals.”