B-Side Guys

Jonny Campolo describes himself as generally in love with life, happy even—ask his girlfriend of 14 years, now his wife. But “elevator” doesn’t traffic in that happiness. Instead, it dwells in what he calls “a longing, drawn out memory, the sad kind of vivid,” documenting not a breakup but a breakdown. The New York project featuring the Campolo brothers (Jonny and Nick, formerly of P.E. and Pill) alongside saxophonist Chase Ceglie captures that specific paralysis of arriving at your floor only to have the door stay closed, caught standing there with nowhere left to go.

The production—handled initially by Jonathan Schenke at Studio Windows and Figure 8 in Brooklyn, then finished at Ceglie’s home studio—creates collage-like immediacy through contradictions. Analog and organic acoustic instruments (piano, guitar, saxophone, clarinet, flute) exist within an electronic environment of modular drum machines and sample-heavy processing. Mixed by Jake Aron, the track achieves something rare: bridging disparate sonic worlds without drawing attention to the seams. It’s the sound of traditional songcraft pushed through samplers and synths, the approach the brothers developed in 2021 while dividing sampler practice in Jonny’s glass art studio.

What makes “elevator” cut deeper than standard heartbreak fare is its focus on unrequited love’s destructive honesty—being slapped with words, confronting the reality that feeling isn’t reciprocated. There’s a particular cruelty in that clarity, and Campolo doesn’t soften it. He finds poetry in stasis, in being in love with waiting itself, trapped in a liminal space between floors. The video, directed by Joey Frank (who’s worked with MGMT and Weyes Blood), presumably amplifies this sense of suspended animation.

The Campolo brothers grew up in coastal New Hampshire immersed in 20th-century songwriters and 90s radio, bringing formal training through select choir and bedroom recording techniques (Jonny on piano, Nick on guitar) into their work. After two decades and multiple projects establishing them in New York’s indie scene through the 2000s, they’ve maintained deep reverence for the Great American Songbook while searching for ghosts of songwriters past—Neil Young, Carole King, Arthur Russell, Scott Walker, Leonard Cohen, Paul Buchanan, Mark Hollis.

That lineage shows in “elevator,” which treats songwriting as the cornerstone of emotive, artful music while refusing to stay confined to traditional arrangements. The track appears on 🌀❓ (Spiral Question Mark), released October 21st—a ballad-heavy emotional tour-de-force that the band describes not as a breakup record but a breakdown. Three years in the making, the album asks “Am I OK?” while reveling in dimly lit solitude, though Campolo suggests light shines in the distance, getting closer with every song. “elevator” sits in that tension between darkness and approaching light, documenting the moment before movement returns, when you’re just standing there waiting for doors that might never open.