Princeton’s Phase II Mix Captures a Band Between Eras

A mixtape at a turning point

Princeton’s Phase II mixtape lands at a useful in-between moment. The Los Angeles quartet is no longer introducing itself: its first album, Cocoon of Love, arrived in 2009, and its members have already toured the polished, literary indie pop that became their early signature. But the band has not yet presented a second album or explained where that sound will go next. A mix made from other artists’ music offers one way to fill the interval without pretending it is a formal new Princeton record.

A surviving contemporary notice identifies Phase II as a Princeton mixtape and points to an OPP entry published on March 28. In this context, OPP means Other People’s Poetry, a Yours Truly series built around artists assembling personal mixes for particular listeners. NYLON’s January 2011 introduction described the installments as musical letters, accompanied by handwritten explanations of the selections. That framing matters. The project was not merely asking bands to list influences or supply an anonymous DJ set; it treated sequencing as a form of address.

The accessible public record does not preserve enough of Princeton’s original entry to reproduce its track list responsibly. What remains clear is the timing. Phase II appeared as the group was returning with “To the Alps,” a single that placed keyboards and rhythmic repetition more prominently than much of its debut had. Heard in that setting, the mixtape is best understood as a bridge: an invitation to consider what Princeton had been listening to while its own music was changing.

What Other People’s Poetry asked of a band

The OPP idea turns the usual promotional mixtape inside out. Instead of treating borrowed songs as background material, it asks the compiler to reveal relationships through selection and order. NYLON’s account of the series highlighted mixes made for siblings, friends and romantic interests, including contributions from Oberhofer, Summer Camp and Katie Stelmanis of Braids. Each installment therefore carried two narratives: the history embedded in the chosen recordings and the private logic connecting them to a recipient.

That is a particularly apt format for Princeton. From the beginning, the band presented pop music as something made in conversation with books, places and earlier records. Its 2008 Bloomsbury EP took its subject from the circle of writers and artists associated with Virginia Woolf. Jesse Kivel told LAist that each song on that EP was based on a member of the Bloomsbury Group. He also explained that Princeton’s name came from the Santa Monica street where he and his twin brother Matt grew up, not from the university in New Jersey.

Those two facts describe the useful tension in Princeton’s identity. The band’s references can be conspicuously literary, but its name is rooted in childhood geography. OPP’s love-letter premise gives that combination room to breathe. A mixtape can be learned without becoming academic and intimate without becoming confessional. It lets a band place favorite music beside its own work while leaving the listener to notice affinities in tone, arrangement and mood.

Before Phase II: the shape of Princeton

Princeton grew from the partnership of Jesse and Matt Kivel with keyboardist Ben Usen. The three had made music together before reuniting while studying in London in 2005, where they wrote songs and performed with limited equipment. Drummer David Kitz subsequently completed the four-piece lineup. In a 2008 interview, Jesse described a writing process in which he and Matt generally brought individual songs to the group before the band improved and arranged them collectively. LAist

That balance between individual composition and group arrangement became central to Cocoon of Love. Pitchfork identified Princeton as an L.A. baroque-pop quartet and noted the record’s orchestration, samples, synthesizers, shoegaze textures and tropical accents. The review also identified Jesse and Matt as twin vocalists, with Usen on keyboards and Kitz on drums, and confirmed Kanine as the album’s label. Pitchfork

Not every listener accepted the band’s refinement without reservation. A contemporary Daily Princetonian review praised the strings, horns, bells and occasional electronic atmosphere while finding parts of the album overly derivative. That criticism is worth retaining because it clarifies the stakes of the current transition. Princeton did not merely need more songs after its debut; it needed a way to make its intelligence and arrangement craft feel less like a collection of familiar indie-pop signals.

The strongest moments on Cocoon of Love already suggested possible exits. Pitchfork singled out tracks that stretched the chamber-pop framework with frayed synth-pop, shoegaze and tropical reverie. The album’s surface could be ornate, but the band was not committed to one fixed instrumental vocabulary. Its next move could reasonably emphasize texture, electronics or pulse without constituting a break with everything that came before.

“To the Alps” changes the engine

That move is now audible in “To the Alps.” BrooklynVegan was offering the track as a download by February 24 while reporting Princeton’s three New York shows and identifying it as a new single. BrooklynVegan A video followed before the end of March: a contemporary post from All Around Sound described the song as dance-oriented and paired it with footage of roller skaters rather than literal mountain scenery.

The track’s importance is not that Princeton has suddenly become a dance act. Its vocals retain the band’s characteristic reserve, and its arrangement remains carefully controlled. What changes is the organizing principle. Where the debut often announced sophistication through instrumental color and melodic ornament, “To the Alps” builds its appeal around a repeating keyboard figure and a steadier rhythmic pull. The decorative elements serve motion instead of competing to become the song’s main event.

That distinction makes the single a persuasive companion to an OPP mix. Mixtapes depend on transitions, pace and the emotional effects created when one recording follows another. “To the Alps” likewise asks listeners to notice continuity and momentum. Its title suggests distance and elevation, but the video answers with wheels, pavement and coordinated physical movement. The contrast keeps the song from becoming picturesque travel pop: the imagined destination may be alpine, but the body of the track remains in Southern California.

The release is also deliberately modest. Hit City U.S.A. lists “To the Alps” for March 29, 2011, on maroon-colored seven-inch vinyl, limited to 500 copies. The label calls it Princeton’s first release since Cocoon of Love and identifies the record’s two sides as seven-inch edits. Hit City U.S.A. One day before that physical release, Phase II gives the return a second dimension: Princeton is presenting both a new song and a curated account of listening.

The shadow on the B-side

The flip side complicates the bright, mobile character of “To the Alps.” Princeton chose “The Electrician,” originally recorded by the Walker Brothers, rather than another new composition. Hit City identifies it explicitly as the Walker Brothers cover paired with the single. That is not an incidental selection. The original appeared on the Walker Brothers’ 1978 album Nite Flights and was written by Scott Engel, better known as Scott Walker. AllMusic

AllMusic’s account places “The Electrician” among four Scott Walker compositions that transformed Nite Flights into something far stranger than a routine reunion album. Its looming synthesizers, severe atmosphere and orchestral interruption belong to a different emotional world from Princeton’s polished debut. By choosing it, the younger band signals an interest in pop arrangements that can carry dread and ambiguity, not only elegance.

The pairing therefore operates as more than the standard original-plus-cover formula. “To the Alps” advances through repetition and light; “The Electrician” introduces pressure and darkness. Together they outline a larger field of possibilities for Princeton’s next phase. Rhythm can be inviting or ominous. Keyboards can provide warmth, distance or threat. A composed surface need not be merely tasteful.

That contrast also prevents Phase II from being read as a simple list of fashionable references. Princeton’s own release demonstrates why listening history matters: a cover can expose a dimension that an original song only hints at. The OPP mix and the seven-inch perform related tasks, using existing recordings to show where the band’s instincts may be heading.

Why this small release cycle matters

A limited single and a personal mixtape do not constitute a second album, and they should not be inflated into one. Their value lies in scale. Both formats reward attention to sequence, selection and physical or emotional context. The seven-inch has two sides; the mixtape has an order and an intended listener. Neither asks Princeton to make a definitive statement about its future.

What they do establish is movement. The band that emerged with literary concepts, strings and carefully upholstered pop is putting rhythm closer to the center without discarding arrangement or atmosphere. “To the Alps” makes that development audible, while the darker B-side shows that the shift can accommodate more than uncomplicated brightness. Phase II, through the OPP format, supplies the listening culture around that change.

On March 28, 2011, that is enough to make Princeton’s return consequential. The mixtape does not need to disclose a complete blueprint. Its title is accurate because this is a second phase in the plainest sense: the point after a debut when a band must decide which habits are identity, which are decoration and which can be transformed. Princeton’s answer begins not with a grand manifesto but with other people’s records, two sides of maroon vinyl and a new beat carrying the group forward.