Tag: blurred harmony

This morning (11/17/17), The Parson Red Heads are releasing a new single, “TV Surprise”, recorded during their Blurred Harmony sessions. Accompanying this single is an announcement that the album will be released in a digital Expanded Edition on 12/8 via Fluff and Gravy Records, featuring 2 bonus tracks – “TV Surprise” and “It’s Hard For Me To Say”.

Here’s how Evan Way describes the new single…

“TV Surprise” is a song that’s been around for probably 10 years at least, maybe more. It’s got a real Felt / Feelies vibe to it that I really like – those are two bands that we were just starting to get into around the time I wrote the song, so it’s no surprise that was coming through. The abstract feel of the lyrics is the thing that ended up making it not a perfect fit for inclusion on the Blurred Harmony album sequence, but Danny (O’Hanlon, who mixed the record), did a really great job creatively mixing the song – he added a lot of the textures that make this recording of the song have such a cool atmosphere and mood.

Fun fact – the ambient sound drone that opens the song is a combination of a Casio Keyboard, vacuum cleaner, bass guitar, and Evan’s 5 year old son George recorded into my Tascam 4-tracker and slowed down.

Paste Magazine included “Blurred Harmony” among the 5 Best Albums of June 2017, calling it “smart, lucid songwriting”. The latest album by The Parson Red Heads was produced and recorded by guitarist Sam Fowles, and is available now from the Fluff and Gravy Store, Bandcamp, or your favorite digital/retail outlet.

Blurred Harmony is the 4th studio full-length album from indie psych-folk stalwarts, The Parson Red Heads. It is the overdriven jangle of Teenage Fanclub and Big Star power-pop, the skewed psychedelics of the Paisley Underground, the bittersweet energy of New Zealand’s “Dunedin Sound” movement, and the muted twang of Cosmic Americana, all crammed into 44 minutes. It was released on June 9 via Fluff and Gravy Records (US) and You Are The Cosmos (Europe).

As the band’s frontman, Evan Way puts it, “This record is more a true part of us than any record we have made before – we put ourselves into it, made ourselves fully responsible for it. Even the themes of the songs are more personal than ever – it’s an album dealing with everything that has come before. It’s an album about nostalgia, about time, change, about the hilarious, wonderful, bittersweet, sometimes sad, always incredible experience of living. Sometimes it is about regret, or the possibility of regret. These are big topics, and to us, it is a big album, yet somehow still intimate and honest.”

Paste Magazine gave the record a rating of 8.9/10, calling the band “scholars of the back-porch jangle-pop”. The record is characterized by “smart, lucid songwriting… a fantastic soundtrack to the psychoses of your summery, sunny days.”

“Blurred Harmony” received a review of 8.9 today from Paste Magazine. The album, which will be officially released TOMORROW (6/9) is the 4th from the psych-jangle-pop band, The Parson Red Heads.

The review describes a few of the tracks:

“Opener “Please Come Save Me” flutters in a Fleetwood Mac groove, with guitarist/vocalist Evan Way and Fowles’ warbling leads orbiting Neil Young rhythmic jitters thanks to the steady thrum of drummer Brette Marie Way. The song blossoms purposefully, allowing for the Red Heads’ Americana tentacles to slither and coil around a cosmic jam that finally breaks after a minute-and-a-half with Way singing dreamily, “Days like this I remember things that I tried to forget.” As the tune chugs along, Way confronts his past with a nose toward the future in the determined line, “The future cannot tell me I’m wrong or make me sigh.” It’s heady stuff from the band, who are equally as ballyhooed for their exploratory affinities for late ‘60s psych as they are for their anthemic songcraft.”

“Sunday Song” floats on a plume of smoky leads and an easy-does-it beat, again slowly evolving from a long, trippy intro into a David Gilmour flashback that flexes and contracts at all the right moments. “Time is a Wheel” seeps feel-good harmonies and breezy, jangly rock that despite its relative non-flashiness most dutifully typifies the Red Heads’ satisfying stranglehold on stoney, county fair power-pop.

If it’s possible for the record to get any more space-y, that can be found in its final three tracks. The psychotropic “Out of Range” is a stunted trip replete with one of the album’s more intoxicating harmonic verses, with Way and Fowles singing, “Sorry I fell out of range/The part that was so strange/is I was always there.” The song is over just as it’s about to lead you into a spiraling tailspin to the benevolent foot of the Overmind, when the aptly titled “In a Dream” clears the aural cobwebs with a delightful Chris Bell homage. The song’s potent drive clears yet another trippy path to the album-ending sound collage “Nostalgia on the Lakefronts.” This is the cosmic broadcast from the band’s internal, time-fearing transmissions, and is a bizarre but fitting way to close the book on Blurred Harmony.

You can Pre-Order the record now at the Fluff and Gravy Store, Bandcamp, or your favorite digital/retail outlet.