After six years as a group, East Los Angeles based R&B/Soul nonet, The Sinseers, have finally released their debut album, Sinseerly Yours, and boy was it worth the wait! From early ’60s pop, Jamaican dancehall and rocksteady, and, of course, ’60s soul, Thee Sinseers have reinterpreted these sounds through an unmistakably modern Chicano soul lens, creating something all their own.
Fronted by singer/songwriter, producer, and keyboardist Joey Quiñones, along with vocalist Adriana Flores, Christopher Manjarrez (bass), Francisco Flores (guitar), Bryan Ponce (guitar and vocals), Luis Carpio (drums and vocals), Eric Johnson (tenor sax), Steve Surman (alto sax), and Jose Luis Jimenez (trombone), the group have never shied away from their influences.
The group of mostly Latino, self-described “emo kids,” started out as a duo, with Quiñones (aka J.Q) and bassist Christopher Manjarrez meeting as teenagers when they were in the band Upground. After meeting guitarist Francisco Flores in 2012, they started writing and performing under the name JQ And The Revue.
“I did my best Chicano Otis Redding impression and I got such a good response. That’s all it took for me to start taking it seriously and start putting my voice out there,” said Quiñones. Over the years they met other fellow Southern Californian’s in the “souldies” community, including one of only a handful of female soul singers in the scene, Andrea Flores.
From a handful of 45s released on Colemine and the Daptone Records imprint, Penrose, to being the backing band for the legendary “Oogum Boogum” singer, Brenton Wood, Thee Sinseers quickly became the elder statesmen of the revived L.A soul scene.
Their 2022 NPR Tiny Desk performance (filmed in Floreria Primavera, guitarist Francisco Flores’ family-owned flower shop) propelled them even further. As Flores states, “It has a lot of emotional significance being able to do it there and to be able…to share a little bit of our culture with a bunch of people that are watching from all over the world.”
Recorded mostly live to tape in Rialto, California’s Second Hand Sounds, the group had no lack of ideas (or the chops to realize them) as they started recording Sinseerly Yours, their long-awaited Colemine Records debut.
Lush orchestration and sweet soul harmonies perfectly back Quiñones’ pleading falsetto, leading each of the album’s ten songs to sound as if they could have easily been released around fifty years ago. While the majority of the album fits neatly into the “sweet soul” category – slower tempo ballads – there’s plenty of fun to be found, with surfy and straight up twisty vibes on display as well!
Get your copy of Sinseerly Yours on turquoise LP HERE or CD HERE and catch the band live on their Sinseerly Yours Tour HERE!
