The Motels

The Motels are a band whose records repeatedly surface in Bret Ellis’s account of his senior year, most distinctly as the soundtrack to an evening at the house on Mulholland. Their music marks everyday scenes of friendship and gathering even as the people listening struggle to keep fear, suspicion, and change at bay.

Records and Recurring Presence

At Bret’s Saturday gathering, he and Debbie Schaffer listen to the band’s first record, which includes “Total Control,” in the living room while they wait for pizza. The detail places The Motels within the domestic routine of the evening: music plays as guests arrive, food is prepared, and the group settles into the house.

The band returns in the narrator’s recollection of a later conversation at the same house. As Bret scans the open-plan room and realizes that Robert Mallory has spoken to Susan Reynolds and apparently Thom Wright about him, The Motels’ second album is playing from the living room stereo. The music continues in the background while Bret understands that Robert has offered the others an account of his actions that conflicts with his own memory. In this scene, the record does not explain the conflict; its ordinary presence sharpens the contrast between a familiar social setting and Bret’s growing sense of exposure.

Music at the Party

The first record also accompanies the evening when Susan announces that she intends to host a party to welcome Robert and proposes that the four friends organize it together. The gathering begins with champagne, cigarettes, and conversation by the pool, then shifts toward dinner indoors. Against these familiar arrangements, Bret is already uneasy about the night’s atmosphere and about what Susan and Thom have brought into his house.

The Motels’ music belongs to this convivial surface, but the scene does not remain easy. Bret is unsettled by Susan’s plan and later learns that Robert has told her he was following him. The record’s background presence links the band to a recurring feature of Bret’s social world: music continues through scenes in which the group’s apparent ease gives way to suspicion and strained loyalties.

Narrative Function

The references to The Motels are brief, but they recur across distinct moments rather than serving as a single namedrop. Their first record anchors a gathering in the physical details of food, drink, and conversation; the second album is heard as Bret registers that his friends have received Robert’s version of events. The movement from party music to music accompanying mistrust gives the band a modest structural role in the novel’s remembered soundscape.

The records are not presented as clues or as agents in the events. Instead, their familiar, ambient presence helps preserve the texture of ordinary life around scenes of emotional disturbance. In Bret’s retrospective account, the music remains audible while friendship and trust become less secure, making The Motels part of the everyday world against which that change can be felt.