Slow Season - Westing (2016)

Contrary to the band’s name, downtime is a rarity for Slow Season. Sandwiched between summer 2015’s extensive tour with their RidingEasy labelmates Mondo Drag and Electric Citizen, plus several short west coast jaunts, the hard-working quartet also found time to hammer out its most powerful and ambitious album yet. Written, engineered, produced and mixed themselves on their own equipment, entirely on analog tape, Westing is a hard-hitting and powerful reminder of how at one time a rock ‘n’ roll band could be a transcendent experience.

While Slow Season’s sound continues to effortlessly nod to the great bands of the 60s-70s, Westing is truly the sound of a band
coming into their own. The songwriting is tight, howling and hypnotic. The sound is classic, yet refreshingly new.

“It’s a different album,” says drummer and primary recording engineer Cody Tarbell. “But we never have wanted to find a particular sound or any one thing and be attached to it permanently. A big part of our records is experimenting.” The Visalia, CA band — Daniel Rice (vocals, guitar), David Kent (guitar), Hayden Doyel (bass), and Cody Tarbell (drums) —  has recorded all of their albums on reel-to-reel at Tarbell’s home studio in a cornfield. This affords them the time to experiment getting sounds, while maintaining focus on the most important notion that performance is key. As with previous albums, recording was pretty immediate, tracked between January 15th and the beginning of February 2016 to 16-track tape and mixed to 2-track tape.

Equally as ambitious as the band’s self-sufficient production is the sprawling lyrical theme to the album.  Thematically picking up where the Slow Season’s previous full length Mountains left off, Westing tackles some heady issues.

Buy Album: http://www.ridingeasyrecs.com/product/slow-season-westing-copy/

Download Album: https://5low5ea5on.bandcamp.com/album/westing