Feature in Imprint - University of Waterloo Newspaper
We were pleased to find an article about us in the latest edition of the University of Waterloo's student newspaper, Imprint. Contributor Elizabeth Esnard touches on the band's early days at UW, and gives her take on "From Seedlings to Saplings." You can check it out here.
We're heading to Ottawa for a show at the Rainbow Bistro this Friday (March 18). We'll be joining our old friends Fathers of Modern Rocketry as well as our new friends Hearts & Mines. If you're in the national capital - don't forget to RSVP!
-p
New Music Friday: EP is Out Today!
'From Seedlings To Saplings...Continued' Now Available
Oh hello there old friend, how've you been? Has 2016 been all you hoped it would be so far? Hopefully you're happy and healthy, we are feeling particularly chipper these days. Things are starting to heat up for LRH in 2016. First and foremost, we have new music for you!!
Our new EP of B-Sides called 'From Seedlings to Saplings... Continued' comes out today and our friends over at Confront Magazine are previewing for your listening convenience, check it out here.
You can also download the EP and full Deluxe album on Bandcamp. Check out the Listen page for more details.
Love,
LRH
P.S. We made a short throwback video showing the aftermath of recording "Riot Gear": Watch it on Facebook.
New Music Coming March 4th!
On February 12th 2015, the members of Long Range Hustle, along with producer Ryan Pritchard, met at Josh’s Toronto apartment. It was the night before “From Seedlings to Saplings…” was set to be mastered, and there was a crucial decision yet to be made: which songs would make the final cut?
When we finished tracking at Escarpment, we walked out the door with 16 songs, and a sense of pride in each of them. While we would have loved to share them all, the resulting album would have run 75+ minutes long (a.k.a. way too long). And so, the night before mastering, there were hard decisions to be made. We debated, argued, and opined well into the night. And what emerged was a sequence of 13 songs that became the album you know and (hopefully) love.
But what happened to the three black sheep? The incorrigible misfits? The last-but-not-least-ers? They have a slightly different tone – a touch rockier, a splash funkier. They’ve been waiting patiently for their time to shine.
We are pleased as plums to announce that on March 4th, to celebrate the one-year anniversary of “From Seedlings to Saplings…”, we are releasing the three remaining songs – Thunder, Hipster Love, and Riot Gear – from our Escarpment sessions. They will be published online in two formats: a 3-song EP, and a 16-song deluxe edition of FSTS – available on Bandcamp, iTunes, Spotify, AppleMusic. If you’d like a physical copy of the EP, there will be a limited quantity of CDs available at our upcoming concerts.
Speaking of which… To support the new release, we’ll be playing a string of shows in late winter and early spring. Here’s the list so far, but keep your eyes peeled as we add more:
March 5th – Kingston, ON @ The Mansion
March 11th – Oshawa, ON @ The Moustache Club
March 18th – Ottawa, ON @ Rainbow Bistro
April 30th – Waterloo, ON @ Chainsaw
We’re looking forward to seeing you all, and sharing these new songs!
-p
Albums in Review 2015 - Deep in the Iris, Braids
Deep in the Iris is about internal struggle. It is listening to the human brain comprehending and processing loss, guilt, trauma, love and happiness. It is scary as hell, but intensely beautiful.
When Paul showed me this album for the first time while driving to a show in the Spring, he prefaced the beginning of it with some extreme compliments as he usually does with great albums. Then he said, “I think you’re really going to like it.”
He knows me well.
I remember being struck by how these beautiful disjointed piano chords, deep bass swells and intricate synth melodies were woven together. They flowed in adjunct harmony over top a bed of driving electronic and kit percussion creating a surreal, dream-like flow throughout the album. And I remember a voice, swirling about the music, sometimes drenched in reverb and delay effects, sometimes naked and vulnerable, sometimes belting and buzzing in anger. To be more specific, I remember hearing a real person: a woman, a daughter, a lover, a friend, and an enemy.
Deep in the Iris opens with a gathering of breath, foreshadowing the impending weight of the coming album. Letting Go, the opening track, has a steady driving drum pattern with offbeat piano chords laced within, creating a base around which the song swells in a haze of hallowing vocals, catchy synth lines and subtle guitar leads. We hear Raphaelle Standell-Preston’s voice and the struggle begins. “The days assemble, what do I see? A river running inside of me.” Letting Go refers to an intense moment of carnal conflict from which Standell-Preston was faced with living the consequences of. The song ends with a longer, more building chord progression as Standell-Preston repeatedly laments, “the hardest part is letting go.”
The album continues with this self-reflective lyrical style. When paired with the dreamy electronic music, it seems as if you can hear Standell-Preston’s internal thoughts as they flash into existence. Taste begins with another driving drum beat and piano combination on top of which the rest of the song swirls. Lyrically this song is struggle to accept the love of another due to self destructive tendencies. The line “We experience the love that we think we deserve” is sang in a catchy melody in the chorus as Standell-Preston bluntly explains why she abandons someone whom she deeply cares about. The song ends with a break in percussion and huge waves of synth mixing with distant vocal effects creating a swirl in which Standell-Preston delivers the lyrics that best encompass the theme of the album: “We can’t explain why we hurt the ones we love most of all, Deep in the iris, you see a place of hope again”
Next, Blondie picks the pace of the album up. A rave like drum beat drives the song with rising and falling synth lines building tension and letting it go only to build it back up. This tension accompanies the dark lyrical content as Standell-Preston writes a frantic internal dialogue of a sexual advance from a step brother. It is simply terrifying, “touch me so young, make it seem fun, take everything, you don’t care.”
Blondie then transitions into Happy When; a sleepier song about the struggle to be happy. It exemplifies the feeling of despair, in which happiness and peace seem constantly out of reach. Next up is Miniskirt, the album’s first single and perhaps the most poignantly written on the record. It is a story about Standell-Preston and her mother escaping an abusive relationship that provides intense insight into the pressures of being a woman and the double standard that exists between men and women and how they choose to use their bodies. Standell-Preston does an incredible job at modifying her voice in this song to convey anger, frustration, sadness and even sarcasm as she describes in the line “Everything he touches is for him”. When the first chorus arrives, the deep buzzsaw synth, it will cause your hair to rise on the back of your neck and Standell-Preston’s defiant, belting voice will stop your breathing as she declares, “My little mini skirt, think you can have it? My little mini skirt, it’s mine all mine”
The album continues from here continuing to tap into these deep personal struggles. Getting Tired acts as the divider of the first half and last half of the album as it gives you a rest from the intensity of Miniskirt. It is quieter, with an off beat drum shuffle underneath a long, detached piano melody line as Standell-Preston continues with an internal dialogue, this time struggling with the feeling that she no longer wants a relationship while still attempting to maintain appearances and spending time that person.
The album ends with a great three-song line up of Sore Eyes, Bunny Rose and Warm Like Summer. These songs flow into each other very well and seem like the warmest on the record providing dance-worthy rhythms and catchy melodies. Which is a contrast and provides relief from the cooler, more depressing tones and chord progressions found in the first half.
Sore Eyes is particularly relevant to the present lyrically as Standell-Preston tackles an obsession with pornography and how it shapes her vision of what sex is supposed to be. She poses the question, "What's so bad with being alone?" in Bunny Rose, depicting a desire to avoid the possible downside of falling in love with someone. And finally, the album ends on a melancholy note of hope. Warm Like Summer is another song of love lost, however, this time with a positive twist to end. As the upbeat beginning of the song switches from its quick synth melodies and driving rhythm to a building, uplifiting piano chord progression, Standell-Preston sings a hopeful message about this person she loves but is no longer intimate with, "There is no end, There is no start because you're always in my heart"
I've seen Braids live now twice, once at Hillside last year and once at Lee's palace in the summer. They are like nothing I've ever seen. 3 people on stage using a combination of sample pads, keyboards, guitars, voice effect modules, an insanely talented drummer in Austin Tufts, an alien of guitar, sampling, and keyboards in Taylor Smith and Raphaelle Standell-Preston with her angelic voice and beautifully genuine attitude on stage. When they play this album live there is a raw energy to it that completely envelopes the room.
Deep in the Iris caught me in a way that few albums have been able to. It is a masterpiece of mixing and production with everything seemingly out of control, yet perfectly aligned.The intricate weaving of an electronic dream pop rollercoaster ride paired with the raw honesty and vulnerability of Standell-Preston's lyrics provided a complete album that allowed us to have a real look at what it is to be human. It has changed the way I think about songwriting. How being vulnerable is good in writing and being honest with yourself about your mistakes will allow the listener to connect with you on a very deep level.
Why hold back? Embrace the struggle.
This is the final review of our 2015 albums of the year, hope you enjoyed it, we all did! We'll be sure to do this again for 2016, until then, come see us play this year, we miss you. Tons of exciting stuff to announce soon.
love,
jay
Albums in Review 2015 - The Waterfall, My Morning Jacket
My favourite album of 2015 was My Morning Jacket’s 7th studio album, “The Waterfall”. My Morning Jacket is known for their highly energetic live performances, extended jams, and their charismatic frontman Jim James. Their music spans many genres with roots in Southern Rock, Country, and Psychedelic Rock. The band has been active since 1998 and over the course of almost 20 years, they have developed quite a dedicated fan base. Their following has grown so large that they’ve been able to create their own 5-day music festival in Mexico called “One Big Holiday”, which is also the name of one of their biggest hits off their third album “It Still Moves”.
After recording and releasing our second album “From Seedlings to Saplings…” this past year, the whole band learned a lot about the recording process and the importance of having a good producer (Lots of love goes out to our producer, Ryan Pritchard). Since My Morning Jacket is known for the energy in their live performances, it’s their producer’s job to bring this energy and live feel into the recording, yet also make the album cohesive. MMJ used producer Tucker Martine for “The Waterfall” who also produced their previous album “Circuital”, and is known for producing the band The Decemberists’ albums. One thing I love about Tucker’s work is that he portrays a consistent emotion throughout his records and they flow nicely from one song to the next. This makes his albums feel like a unit instead of several pieces put together. It also makes it easy for the listener to let the album run from start to finish without feeling the need to skip or replay any songs. I really feel as though Tucker accomplished this feat with “The Waterfall”. The track listing is set up in such a way that it takes the listener on a journey, using The Waterfall as a metaphor exploring substantial themes such as love, loss, depression, faith, and nature.
The album starts off with an uplifting, hopeful tune “Believe (Nobody Knows)” that grasps the listener with its ascending synth intro, soulful bass line, and crisp guitar solo. Jim James belts in the chorus repeating, “Believe” over and over until the final time he hits this one home by raising an octave and extending the line. This is truly a brilliant song to have as an opener. It follows a similar structure to MMJ’s opening song and title track off their 5th studio album “Evil Urges” and its faithful theme seems almost eerily fitting. How many times have you listened to an album but since you liked the first song so much, you had a tough time moving past it and “believing” that the rest of the album will be as good (We as a band refer to this condition as “first song syndrome”… It’s a thing. I have some examples where I’ve had this problem, which can be found at the bottom of this post). This song is telling us to have some faith in ourselves, faith that we’ll find answers to our questions, faith that we can get through tough times, and faith that the rest of the album will be as good as this opening track. In the end, this hopeful opener is deceiving relative to the dark themes explored throughout the rest of the album.
The title track “In It’s Infancy (The Waterfall)” is the song that brings this whole album together, which is why James used The Waterfall as both the album title and the album art. In an interview with Rolling Stone, James states that The Waterfall “is a metaphor for how life is constantly beating you down, and you really have to take time to stop it and get through.” This is evident in the main line of the song, “Again I stopped the waterfall by just [thinking, breathing, feeling, believing]” but then he keeps returning to the line “The idea was always there, In It’s Infancy” referring to the thoughts he’s trying to move past. These grim thoughts make it clear that James was in a dark place while writing the lyrics for this album. In fact, during the recording process, while moving an amp, James felt a sharp pain in his back and subsequently had to go through surgery for a herniated disc. It’s ironic for such an agonizing event to happen when the band planned to be isolated, removed from all distractions by recording in a hilltop mansion on Stinson Beach in Northern California. The inspiration from being in a serene environment while also experiencing excruciating pain has led to a beautiful culmination of graceful imagery to explain some ominous themes. After listening to “In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)”, it sheds a new light on the first song “Believe (Nobody Knows)”. Maybe “Believe” isn’t as hopeful as we originally thought - Maybe believing is just a tool to use to stop The Waterfall.
Some of the other lyrics on “The Waterfall” indicate that James was going through a rocky relationship during the writing process. The song “Big Decisions”, which was the first song off the record released as a single, explores our fears for change and making the big decisions in our lives. The narrator is sick of dealing with their indecisive partner and is trying to influence them to make their own decisions instead of having outside parties dictate their life. This one ties in quite nicely with the song before it “Thin Line”. In the “Thin Line” James feels as though he’s putting in all the work into a relationship and not getting enough back in return. “It’s a Thin Line between lovin’, and wastin’ my time”. While in Big Decisions, he’s sick of making all the Big Decisions for his partner; again putting in more work than he feels is necessary. Even though the song “Get the Point” is before the other two songs in the track order, this seems to be the final discussion James is having with his partner. In “Get the Point”, James is having a conversation with his former lover, confessing that he hopes his partner “Gets the Point” that the love that was once there has faded and is now gone. He then concludes the story with the final song on the album “Only Memories Remain” where James is reflecting on his relationship without any regrets on the love and good times once had and all that remains now are memories. This gives the listener and James a nice sense of closure and the sombre tone in this song is a satisfying way to conclude the album.
“Spring (Among the Living)” is the song on the record that stands out for me musically. Anyone who knows my taste in music knows that I’m a sucker for a good build, which has led me to be a huge fan of the post-rock genre and can also be heard in some of the songs on our record “From Seedlings to Saplings…”. This song is a perfect display of producer Tucker Martine’s magic. He’s able to overlay instrument upon instrument, one at a time, bringing each to the front and then to the background, giving a sense of complexity in a simple song yet at the same time increasing the energy to sound like a live recording. MMJ’s experience playing live shows is quite evident in the writing of this track leaving them room to rock out with an extended jam and an epic light show using the snare shots at the end. Another song that stood out for me musically was the second last song on the album, “Tropics (Erase Traces)”. This one also acts as a build but with a dark undertone to it, finishing with a blazing guitar solo. Again, this is the perfect live song; a ton of room to jam and rock out to the solo at the end, which is exactly what MMJ is best at.
Overall, My Morning Jacket has done an excellent job combining the innovative sounds from their previous albums to create the unique tone found in “The Waterfall”. The themes explored in their lyrics and the complexity found in the song writing shows a real sense of maturity from the band. I was fortunate enough to see them perform some of these songs at Field Trip in Toronto this year, which was the initial catalyst to my obsession for this album. The concert really brought these songs to life by adding the energy MMJ is so well known for delivering in their live performances. I highly recommend taking the journey down “The Waterfall” if you have not done so – its cadence and intricacies will leave you wanting more from these Rockstars.
First Song Syndrome Examples (In the form Artist-Album-Song):
Bon Iver – Bon Iver -Perth
The National – Boxer – Fake Empire
Bombay – So Long See You Tomorrow – Overdone
The Decembrists- What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World- The Singer Addresses His Audience (same producer as The Waterfall, Tucker Martine)
Kurt Vile – b’lieve i’m goin down - Pretty Pimpin
Mother Mother – The Sticks – The Sticks (kind of the second song)