The Color Pink

The Color Pink’s visionary, Mikey Iansito, first discovered his love of music as a kid staying with his grandparents. It was an old school Italian household: grandpa drank, smoked, and sang opera, and grandma loved to cook. While dinner was being prepared, little Mikey was down in the basement picking out melodies on the house piano. 

 

Eventually, Mikey emerged a gifted singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer. Yet for all of his talents, he just never felt comfortable enough in his own skin to release any music. Fear held him back. Upon hearing an uncredited quote about making art and sharing it with the world, Mikey had a lightbulb moment. Now, he is issuing Mazes, the debut album from The Color Pink, his one-man, experimental psychedelic pop band.

 

The 9-song album is a coming-of-age themed record with a subversive edge. “I use satire in tandem with self-exploration. I poke fun at a lot of things people think are normal based on my experiences in suburban American culture. I guess you can say it’s a quiet middle finger,” Mikey says with a good-natured laugh. 

 

The Color Pink offers a thoroughly curated aesthetic of songs, fashion, imaging, production, songcraft, and lyrics. On the band’s recordings, Mikey plays every instrument, sings every vocal, writes every song, and produces, mixes, and masters every track. The band’s name is a tribute to Mikey’s favorite color; his love of Pink Floyd; and his contrarian nature: he’s amused by the idea of a cisgendered man loving a color historically favored by cisgendered women. The Color Pink is a swirl of jazz, rock, doo-wop, ragtime, indigenous NOLA music, video game music, opera, American folk, and the Great American Songbook. 

 

Mikey’s songwriting features surrealistic lyrics, dreamy keys, funky drums, bluesy guitar riffs, and Mikey’s silken falsetto vocals. The Color Pink production aesthetic hovers around the years 1965-1975. “I love how those records sound like they were recorded in a vacuum, and there are all these extraneous, weird effects,” Mikey explains. He counts as inspirations artists as widely eclectic as Pink Floyd, Grizzly Bear, Tame Impala, Steely Dan, The Beatles, and America. 

 

Mikey’s fascination with exploring piano at his grandparents house eventually led him to an obsession with synthesizers, inspired, in part, by the gorgeous synth melodies on Wham!’s “Last Christmas.” Interestingly enough though, neither piano nor keyboards were his first instrument, drums were. Out of necessity Mikey became a multi-instrumentalist with an interest in recording spurred on by his uncle gifting him with a zip disc recorder. 

 

So he immersed himself in pursuing music. Mikey sharpened his studio chops apprenticing at a professional studio near his house, The Barber Shop Studios (Breaking Benjamin, Warren Haynes, The Pretty Reckless). “The first day I got my license, I raced over there and asked to intern. Between getting people coffee and cleaning the bathroom, I learned a lot,” Mikey says. His time at the studio became Mikey’s college education, and he hasn’t looked back since. 

 

Mazes abstractly documents that period of adolescence between 15-25 with a vintage, crushed-velvet flair. The groovy “Don’t Act So Surprised” addresses the consequences of reckless living with plush production, featuring jaunty piano, bold synth textures, burly funk-guitar riffs, laconic lead vocals, and a dense thicket of 1970s AM radio harmony vocals. The song’s video emulates the mystique of old concert footage with Mikey in the roles of each member of a rock n’ roll band. 

 

The song “Mazes” is the closest thing The Color Pink comes to a pop song, and it boasts slinky acoustic-guitar grooves, a snapped beat, a jazzy chord structure, and airy harmony vocals. The cinematic “Theme for the Modern Cowboy” lives up to its title by updating a beloved song form with retro-futuristic synth melodies and lush, 1970s R&B ballad vocals. The track “Belarus” offers forth a Pink Floydian, floating-in-space feel with its moony atmospherics and its lyrical guitar leads. It also showcases Mikey’s gift for engaging narratives, an aspect of his artistry which will be further explored on future songs. 

 

Mikey’s upcoming plans for The Color Pink include new music, possible collaborations, multimedia live shows, and never stopping. Mikey says: “Seeing the little song babies in my mind grow up is incredibly satisfying, and I will do this forever.”