BAND OF THE DAY: SLOTHTRUST

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Fresh from supporting Manchester Orchestra at the end of 2018 and headlining their own sold-out UK tour in January 2019, US alt rock band Slothrust will release a new single “Peach” on May 3rd through Dangerbird Records. The track is taken from their fourth full-length critically acclaimed album “The Pact”‘, released last September and produced and engineered by multi-Grammy award nominee Billy Bush (Garbage/The Naked & Famous/Neon Trees.) Slothrust are: Leah Wellbaum (vocals/ guitar), Will Gorin (drummer) and Kyle Bann (bass guitar).

Thunderously versatile and agile in their acclaimed lives shows, the LA based band, originally from Boston, relish delivering guitar epics and inventive covers (“Baby, One More Time” by Britney Spears, for example) to their ever-growing legion of fans across the globe. Nor do they tone this down in the recording studio: “The Pact” is an album that testifies to a band showcasing perfectly their dynamic evolution through experimentation and exploration. The result is powerful, punchy, dreamy and above all: clever, demonstrating the band’s deft shaping of contrasting sonic elements to forge a muscular sound that’s uniquely their own

“Peach” follows “Double Down”, a lurching rock song with a subversive pop hook and screeching distortion, as the next single from the album. The track demonstrates Wellbaum’s unrepentant aesthetic penchant for quirky wordplay as she free-associates “Jack-O-Lantern, Chupacabra; Sick Menorah, Candelabra” while cascading riffs illustrate her prodigious power and inventive nuance on guitar. It’s a child-like device which Wellbaum freely admits: “Peach” is a song that embraces the inner-child and all that comes with it. There is this special way we free associate when we are young that seems to fade away with age and experience. It’s important to me to keep that curiosity alive and intentionally access feelings when you felt them for the first time— both light and dark.”

The video to “Peach“, with its child-like cartoony magic realism, lends itself perfectly to this idea.  Indeed, the concept for it had been brewing in Wellaum’s imagination for quite a while: “I’ve had this vision in mind for “Peach” for a long time and it’s so exciting to manifest it. Music is potent to all creatures, and I love this fairytale-esque idea of a song that is so magnetic that the creatures of the forest can’t help but be pulled in to join the magic. 

Of the writing process, Wellbaum reflects, “I need to do it less, but I want to do it more. I don’t feel frantic anymore.” While she might argue that there’s no concrete conceptual through-line to her writing, it’s hard to ignore the ongoing conversation between her and her restless, boisterous, but ultimately unsure inner child. “When writing a lot of this material I tried to step further outside of myself and take risks I hadn’t before. After doing that, I stepped back into the role of performer and author of the material. It’s a really liberating experience.”

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