B-Side Guys

Alex and Spencer Livingston turn a noisy neighbor into an existential threat. “Resident Psycho” started from sharing a wall with someone strange at their Los Angeles apartment, but it mutates into something more unsettling than simple noise complaints. The third single from their upcoming fifth album (due next year) documents the specific paranoia that comes from hearing pounds on the wall, feeling your skin crawl, recognizing that someone’s state of being is literally taking up the oxygen in your space.

The production channels their blend of modern indie rock sensibilities and vintage pop charm into something with sharper edges than their typical approach. The band formed in 2014 when the Livingstons connected through solo shows, and their undeniable musical chemistry has carried them through acclaimed releases like debut “OK To Land” and 2021’s “Take Me” (produced by drummer/collaborator Mike Schadel and mixed by Josiah Mazzaschi). Currently collaborating with Jeff Schroeder of Smashing Pumpkins on their next release, they’ve maintained their distinctive sound while finding ways to surprise.

The lyrics strip the situation to its uncomfortable essentials: feeling breeze on skin but questioning where your skin goes, the pounding on walls, the state someone’s in becoming a final spin or final sin. There’s claustrophobia in how someone else’s existence consumes the oxygen, how their presence seeps through walls and colonizes your awareness. The repetition of “resident psycho” becomes incantation and accusation simultaneously—naming the threat while acknowledging you’re stuck with it, sharing not just a building but breathing the same compromised air.

What makes the track work beyond its origin story is how it captures the low-grade dread of knowing someone unsettling lives too close. Not dramatic danger but the constant awareness of wrongness just beyond your wall, the sound of someone who might be fine but makes your skin crawl anyway. For a band whose live performance of “Little Bird” in a parking garage went viral and whose work has gained airplay on 88.5 The SoCal Sound, KCRW, KROQ, and 98.7fm, they’ve proven capable of capturing intimate moments that resonate beyond their immediate circumstances.

Following their 2022 album “Look” which displayed their versatility and continued creativity, “Resident Psycho” suggests Livingmore’s fifth album might push into darker territory while maintaining the catchy sonic experience they’re known for. Sometimes the scariest thing isn’t what’s outside your door—it’s what’s on the other side of your wall, taking up the oxygen, making their presence felt one pound at a time.