When their drummer moved to California, childhood friends Tim Mensel and Cole Maxwell moved into a new apartment in Brighton and began writing bedroom pop.

Mensel describes the genre as “left-of center” to more straightforward strains of pop. It’s collaborative between the two songwriters who often start their ideas on a tiny guitar hanging in the living room. From couch to bedroom to unfinished basement, come the homemade songs of All Talk‘s upstairs/downstairs, which releases at the end of May.

“When I write songs, I usually write them on an acoustic guitar and incorporate the electric afterwards,” says Maxwell. “That’s something we kept the sound of on this EP, having acoustic on some of the songs but also layering over. Just the sense of writing songs in my bedroom is sort of reflected.”

Producing from home is new for the group whose debut album Juno has a polish of in-studio recording. This fall, however, brought bleach and tangled ceiling wires. Writing came with cleaning up and searching for used microphones on Ebay. The pair bought four and set up shop in their remastered basement.

“This time around, we were recording all day,” says Mensel. “We would stop in the evening, cook dinner and hang out but still be in the space of the project. We would keep talking about the songs and arrangements. I feel like living where we were recording made it all-encompassing.”

Mensel admits that with their old drummer Tim Carman across the country, All Talk “rocks hard a little less,” but he also believes the shift is good. He and Maxwell are guitarists and singers, looking for new cohesion, new groove and seriously creative motivation. Roaming through their Brighton apartment, the two friends seem to have found some tucked away in dusty corners.

“The whole point of the project is to not just kick around music but to make it part of our identity,” says Mensel. “It’s a bit ‘tongue in cheek.’ We’re ‘All Talk,’ but I don’t feel like what we’re doing is all talk.”

Stream “Invader” below, which is off upstairs/downstairs out May 27. Also, be sure to check out All Talk with a new drummer at Obrien’s on April 12 with Painted Zeros, Izzy True and Babydriver.