(Speakeasy) The inimitable four-piece OXBOW announce their first new music in six years with the anticipated release of Love's Holiday (July 21, Ipecac Recordings). The album is preceded today by the lead single "1000 Hours" - a song featuring Roger Joseph Manning Jr. (Jellyfish/Beck) and a video directed by John David Levy.
About the track, vocalist and lyricist Eugene Robinson comments: "'1000 Hours' for the OXBOW completist, 100 percent ties into our other song "1000,' thematically in my mind. But filming the video, given that I just had surgery a few days before, felt very much like Mann's 'Death in Venice' to me. You know where waiting to die never felt more beautiful, which really feels like the essence of love. Or at least one of them."
Guitarist Niko Wenner adds: "'1000 Hours' began life with the bright, extroverted feel you hear most, but inevitably the darker introspective mood of the coda and intro emerged. Both qualities are essential to Love's Holiday. Roger (backing vocals), John (video director) and Joe Chiccarelli (co-producer of Love's Holiday with Wenner) all did extraordinary work to heighten these emotions."
Previous OXBOW albums found their impetus in a lyrical framework provided by Robinson, with Wenner applying his musical compositions to the singer's narratives. However, Love's Holiday began with the music. "The music was chiefly inspired by and written for my family. We've had two children born and my father die while writing and working on this record," Wenner says. "The songs are just a collection of music that I sang to my babies and then wrote guitar parts for, and brought to the band as, OXBOW songs." Love, the guitarist confirms was the organizing principle behind these songs, even if they still carry the band's signature brand of drama and conflict.
"I've always been chagrined that no one understood that our songs were love songs," Robinson says while reflecting on the band's output from the last 35 years. Love may not have been the most obvious music in their earlier work, but the subject has never been more obvious now.
One of the more apparent manifestations of this new approach is the orchestration on Love's Holiday. OXBOW has often employed auxiliary instrumentation as an addendum to the guitars on their recordings, but this time around, human voices are the primary addition. Kristin Hayter (Lingua Ignota) lends her soaring, operative vocals to "Lovely Murk," while the layered choral bed of "1000 Hours" was provided by Roger Joseph Manning Jr (Jellyfish/Beck). The album also features a 15-person choir plus strings, oboe, flute, and clarinet.
For the differences in the process, Love's Holiday is still very much an OXBOW album. Across its 10 tracks, Love's Holiday feels feverish, disorienting, hostile, beguiling, defeated, and triumphant.
Love's Holiday tracklisting:
1. Dead Ahead
2. Icy White & Crystalline
3. Lovely Murk
4. 1000 Hours
5. All Gone
6. The Night The Room Started Burning
7. " "
8. Million Dollar Weekend
9. The Second Talk
10. Gunwale
Oxbow Release 'Lovely Murk (ft. Lingua Ignota)' Video
Oxbow Release 'Icy White & Crystalline' Video
Oxbow Return With '1000 Hours' And Announce New Album
On the Blue: New Horizons Cruise Days 4 & 5: Starship Lands on the Pearl, Alan Parsons Takes It Home
Kandace Springs - Run Your Race
On the Blue: New Horizons Cruise Day 1: Marbin Gets the Fun Started
Hot In The City: Prog Band Tu-Ner Coming to Phoenix
blink-182 Launching North American Stadium And Arena Tour
Watch David Gilmour's 'The Piper's Call' Video
Check Out Powerman 5000 'Dancing Like We're Dead'
The String Cheese Incident Take Fans On Epic 'Roll Around The Sun'
Watch Motley Crue's 'Dogs Of War' Video
Richie Sambora Returns With 'I Pray', The First Of Four New Songs
The Smashing Pumpkins Reveal New Guitarist
Linkin Park Top Hard Rock And Vinyl Albums Charts With Papercuts