SLOTHRUST DEBUTS "LIKE A CHILD HIDING BEHIND YOUR TOMBSTONE"
VIA CLRVYNT, NEW SINGLE OUT NOW ON iTUNES/SPOTIFY
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| Today Slothrust debuted their newest single "Like A Child Hiding Behind Your Tombstone" exclusively on CLRVYNT. The band will release "Like A Child" along with their previous single "Horseshoe Crab" on their upcoming album 'Everyone Else' due out 10/28 on Dangerbird Records. |
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With their long-awaited third album Everyone Else, Slothrust deliver ten riveting anthems that reward repeated listens. The songs grab the ear and pierce the psyche with complex arrangements and lyrical depth intensified by guitarist/vocalist Leah Wellbaum’s penetrating vocal delivery.
Slothrust is Wellbaum, Kyle Bann (bass), and Will Gorin (drums). The trio first staked out their unique strain of jazz- and blues-afflicted rock as students at Sarah Lawrence College. The band’s 2012 debut Feels Your Pain, and its successor 2014’s Of Course You Do, established the band as a breed apart, serving up deceptively clever epics that veer satisfyingly between incandescent riffing and pop hooks, winsome anxiety and powerful heft.
“People have always had trouble comparing us to other bands, but someone recently described us as Nirvana meets Wynton Marsalis, and I loved that,” says Wellbaum. Even the band’s name inspires a beat of thoughtful consideration as the eyes take in the letters and the brain makes its snap judgement: Slo Thrust? Slot Rust? Slo Trust? Sloth-Rust.
We all studied jazz and blues, so I often use chords and voicings that aren’t quite as conventional for contemporary rock,” she continues. “Certain harmonic movement can get stale, so I try to incorporate colorful notes to give it more depth. The improvisational spirit of blues music is also something we try to always keep with us, even in more composed playing. I am drawn to musicians a bit further outside of the rock tradition, such as John Fahey, Elizabeth Cotten, D'Angelo, and Portishead. Growing up I listened to a lot of R&B and classical music. And musicals."
While Everyone Else clearly shows Wellbaum fulfilling her early promise as a singer, it’s where she hits her stride as a lyricist: Pulling the listener under the surface to explore a submerged world brimming with exotic creatures. Water motifs abound, detailing oddly off-kilter observations about floating, submerging and drowning that are anything but morose. Instead, they contort and reflect worldly truths about life on dry land.
Nowhere is this vision clearer than on the slow burn of the album’s centerpiece track “Horseshoe Crab.” Here, with storm cloud riffs and Will Gorin and Kyle Bann’s perfectly calibrated rhythmic undercurrent, Slothrust erupts in a geyser of emotional and spatial distance, as Wellbaum observes, “I don’t have anything in common with myself, except that I came from the sea, like everyone else did.”
“Like a Child Hiding Behind Your Tombstone" opens like some bizzarro world lullaby dispensing sage advice: “Drink seltzer, smoke weed when you can’t sleep. Think about shooting birds, everyone has got a violent streak.” Then, as the guitars explode, the rhythm section dials into stylish, disciplined groove to set up an expansive instrumental break that gently floats to a close with Wellbaum, at peace: “Hold me under the water. My lungs are filling with plankton. But the lake is not lonely. No need for you to come with me.”
Above all the overriding ethos of Everyone Else is its sense of inclusiveness: all people, every feeling, quiet, loud, any time signature. With a snap of the neck the band launches into the hyper-adrenalized “Rotten Pumpkin” with Wellbaum singing in a rapid-fire vomit burst, “I’ll make you sick because I’m soft water. Reach inside of me, and scoop out my seeds.” This midpoint between grunge and art rock is the aesthetic Slothrust elevates: sharp-eyed individualism, serious musicianship, humble intelligence, controlled abandon.
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TOUR DATES (With Highly Suspect)
9.24.2016 - Los Angeles, CA @ Troubadour
9.25.2016 - Los Angeles, CA @ Troubadour
10.13.16 - St. Louis, Mo @ Delmar Hall
10.14.16 – Nashville, TN @ Cannery Ballroom
10.15.16 – Little Rock, AR @ Metroplex
10.16.16 – Dallas, TX @ Trees
10.20.16 – Austin, TX @ The Parish
10.21.16 – Houston, TX @ Warehouse Live Studio
10.22.16 – New Orleans, LA @ Gasa Gasa
10.23.16 – New Orleans, LA @ Gasa Gasa
10.27.16 – Washington, DC @ Black Cat
10.28.16 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
10.29.16 – New York, NY @ Irving Plaza
11.1.16 – Brooklyn, NY @ Rough Trade (Headlining)
11.3.16 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Rex Theater
11.4.16 – Asbury Park, NJ @ House of Independents
11.5.16 – Baltimore, MD @ Baltimore Soundstage
11.6.16 – Salisbury, MD @ Headquarters Live
11.9.16 – Holyoke, MA @ Gateway City Live
11.10.16 – Cambridge, MA @The Sinclair
11.11.16 – Portland, ME @ Port City Music Hall
11.12.16 - Clifton Park, NY @ Upstate Concert Hall
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EVERYONE ELSE - TRACKLISTING
01. Surf Goth
02. Like A Child Hiding Behind Your Tombstone
03. Rotten Pumpkin
04. Horseshoe Crab
05. Pseudo Culture
06. The Last Time I Saw My Horse
07. Mud
08. Trial & Error
09. Sleep Eater
10. Pigpen
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