Legendary Seattle Psych rock band, Sky Cries Mary, releases their 13th studio album, “Wandering In the Vastness”.
This collection of songs came together as a synthesis of feeling, thought, meditation, and experience during the global pandemic. So much isolation, loneliness, fear…How can you make an album when you can’t even be in the same room together?
The band found ways to collaborate despite the constraints brought on by lockdown and social distance. They wrote and collaborated from studios in Seattle, New York, Chattanooga, and points in between.
“I write from a lot of different instruments”, muses founding member Ben Ireland, “The pandemic gave us a lot of time to focus and expand our musicianship. Members were definitely encouraged to take risks!”
In the tradition of psychedelic pioneers Brian Jones, Terry Riley, and The Byrds, Ben co-wrote “Bright Biggest Eye” with Roderick. Beginning with an acoustic 12 string guitar, they texted song starts and lyrics back and forth later adding drones, bass lines, percussion, vocal parts.
“Raga Metal Machine”, a tribute to friend/idol Lou Reed’s ugly beautiful masterpiece “Metal Machine Music” involves 5 raga drone boxes run through a wall of Fender Twin Reverbs, guitar, some primitive voicings and features a 12 bar blues sung in reverse.
“Curt Eckman writes these deep sinewy bass lines that break the barrier between rhythm and lead” says Ireland. Eckman’s multitrack bass lines and special effects are featured on “L-Train”
Kevin Whitworth, a veteran guitarist for Love Battery and progenitor of the Seattle rock sound, infuses subtle guitar embellishments, with sampled SCM recordings, morphing them into an aural montage of shoe gazing crunchy grooves.
Sky Cries Mary founder Roderick Wolgamott is known for drawing from the spiritual and metaphysical for his lyrics. On Wandering in he Vastness, the lead singer and lyricist takes a more personal approach, sharing literal snapshots from life: A snowy evening in New York spent waiting, witnessing a friend’s relapse, a family’s resolve to survive hunger in the streets, a shout-out to a friend in Rock legend heaven.
“Sometimes my lyrics emerge from weird dreams, imaginings, and sometimes they come from waking life!” recalls Wolgamott. He adds that Debra Reese (who joined the band 2017) “is in the vocal personification of female animus and astral plane energy in my storytelling!”
Jack Endino, the acclaimed producer and engineer for Nirvana and Soundgarden, sits at the helm of the control booth once again. He also plays guitar on the album and returns to the drum kit on “L Train”. Throwing back to his early tape-op days, Endino includes one of his own called , “Jodo”. Throughout, Jack masterfully reunited the disparate parts, creating a hypersonic journey for listeners. The end result: the most creative and versatile Sky Cries Mary album since This Timeless Turning in 1994!
Hunnypot is proud to be Sky Cries Mary's official sync representative both Masters & Publishing, ask us about one-stop LICENSING!
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Focus tracks: L Train, Bright Biggest Eye & Can't Find The Time
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