Aaron Frazer

Written By Alex Martinez

Aaron Frazer’s voice floats somewhere between a prayer and a plea. Long before listeners fell for his silvery falsetto on Durand Jones & the Indications’ records, he was a kid in Baltimore soaking up Curtis Mayfield, Smokey Robinson and the 45s his parents spun. He eventually enrolled at Indiana University, where he met the classmates who would become the Indications.

“Originally, we just wanted to make something… we’d just listen to 45s and talk about what we liked,” Frazer said. “‘I love how distorted the drums are,’ or ‘how out of tune the bass is,’ or ‘how shitty this sounds’, in a good way! Then we’d go down in the basement and try to make something that sounded like that.”

For album two, Frazer and his bandmates were drawn to ’70s vocal groups like the Whatnots from Baltimore and the Moments from Washington, D.C. For their third album, the band leaned into disco. On their latest release, Frazer said, the Indications looked inward.

“We finished it and asked, ‘Who does this sound like?’ And the answer was, ‘It sounds like Durand Jones & the Indications,’” he said. “It takes a long time to sound like yourself.”

Frazer never expected to be a singer. He joined the Indications as a drummer, planning to stay behind the kit. While tracking a guide vocal for “Is It Any Wonder,” he lay on a couch, relaxed and a little high. Unable to engage his diaphragm, he slipped into his head voice.

“I naturally sang an octave higher than the demo, and that’s what’s on the album version,” he said. “When I heard it back, it felt like myself. Sometimes when you hear your own voice recorded, it’s like nails on a chalkboard. But with falsetto, it felt like its own instrument. From that point on, it became my most comfortable style for expressing myself.”

That falsetto, now a defining element of the Indications’ sound, also figures prominently in Frazer’s solo work.

Frazer moved to Los Angeles two years ago, the only member of the band to relocate full-time. The city, he said, has always embraced him.

“I mean, nobody shows love like L.A., man,” he said. “I feel like they’ve been riding for me and the Indications pretty much since we started putting out music. And L.A., receiving that feedback, you know—it’s almost like a bat, how a bat sends out echolocation. We were making soul music in our basement in Indiana, and we kind of got that echo back from L.A., being like, ‘Yo, we’re out here. We love this.’ That kind of told me there was some special connection between me and Los Angeles, and it’s only grown over the years.”

That connection deepens this fall, when Frazer headlines the Greek Theatre.

The Indications’ fourth album came together in two very different rooms: guitarist and co-producer Blake Rhein’s Chicago apartment and Valentine Studios in Los Angeles, a time-capsule facility untouched since the 1970s.

“In a way, we tried to take it back to our roots,” Frazer said. “If something sounded good from the demo, we’d just build on top of that. We wouldn’t try to re-record it in a fancy studio. We just sort of kept it raw, which is how the project started. The first album is really raw. So it’s nice to take that rawness and combine it with the lessons we’ve learned making albums. There’s a rawness, but also a sophistication. That’s always the balance we’re striving for.”

Frazer’s second solo album, Into the Blue, continues that inward search while letting his hip-hop and spaghetti western obsessions peek through. His first solo record, with Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, gave him the confidence to strike out on his own.

“They call it an album cycle, right? It’s cyclical,” he said. “You go through similar steps every time, and each time you apply what you learned. My first solo record was with Dan Auerbach. I think it worked because I had experience with the Indications. Then for this latest one, I used the experience from my first solo record. Each record gets me closer to taking what’s in my head and putting it on wax.”

Asked to pick three songs that define him, Frazer didn’t hesitate: “Is It Any Wonder,” “Too Many Tears” and “Into the Blue.”

“That last one has hip-hop DNA, a spaghetti western feel, and it still keeps it soulful,” he said. “I’m always trying to bring together different influences in a way that feels classic, but not like an impersonation.”

Looking ahead, Frazer said he wants to return to the “sweet, sweet lowrider soul” that inspired him as a kid while also exploring his jazz-tinged side project, Okonski, where the drums “knock a little harder.”

He rattled off heroes—Curtis Mayfield in his yellow suit, Smokey Robinson during Quiet Storm, the Sylvers, Gil Scott-Heron—and cited hip-hop producers Pete Rock, DJ Premier and 9th Wonder as shaping his rhythmic feel.

Whether behind the kit or in the spotlight, Frazer said he carries those influences into every performance.

“Nobody shows love like L.A.,” he said. “It’s only grown over the years.”