Jake Bellows's Debut Solo Album New Ocean Streaming At Spin
New Ocean Out August 6 On Saddle Creek
"The 11-track LP features previously shared stunners "I Know You" and "All Right Now",
and also makes way for "left turns into drunk-in-the-sun bossa nova,
blue-eyed-soul ruptured by fuzz guitar, [and] love songs that are not
necessarily ballads" - SPIN
"Bellows' woozy voice waxes, wanes, woos and philosophizes, revealing the work of a songwriter who knows the best music is not a one-way conversation." - Buzzbands LA
"Bellows' woozy voice waxes, wanes, woos and philosophizes, revealing the work of a songwriter who knows the best music is not a one-way conversation." - Buzzbands LA
Download: "All Right Now" via Paste or SoundCloud
Watch: New Ocean Album Trailer via YouTube
Jake Bellows is set to release his debut solo album New Ocean on August 6 via Saddle Creek. In anticipation of the release, SPIN is running an exclusive album stream a week before the street date. New Ocean was recorded at Omaha's ARC Studios with engineer Ben Brodin (Before the Toast and Tea, Conor Oberst), Ryan Fox (The Good Life), Todd Fink (The Faint), and Heath Koontz (Neva Dinova). New Ocean is now available for pre-order on CD & LP via Saddle Creek and limited edition cassette through Majestic Litter.
Jake Bellows had quit music. Or so he thought.
After fronting Neva Dinova
for more than 15 years, which included five full-lengths, a split EP,
and countless tours, he packed up his dog and moved from his native
Omaha to his girlfriend's hometown of Los Angeles. Two days before he
left he recorded 18 demos with musician and engineer Ben Brodin at
Brodin's insistence. Once in L.A., Bellows got a job installing
sliding-glass doors and sold his Les Paul to buy a Datsun pick-up truck.
Though he had no plans to form a new band, he played the occasional solo show, performed with Whispertown,
and continued to write songs. In early 2011, an invitation arrived from
Omaha's Film Streams Theater for Jake's old friend Ryan Fox also living
on the West Coast, to perform an original live film-score. Fox enlisted
Bellows and Brodin to collaborate and the trio began to compose and
discuss improvisational ideas over long-distance. Since they were all
going to be in Omaha and had a long history of playing in each other's
bands, Brodin and Fox nudged Bellows into booking studio time to record
some of his dormant songs.
Fox
and Bellows drove from LA to Omaha that November. They entered ARC
Studios for a feverish recording session, arranging and writing parts
on the fly with an impromptu band including Heath Koontz, Todd Fink,
Whispertown bandmate Morgan Nagler and other old friends. Committing
quickly to intuitive arrangements the band recorded 17 tracks in a
little more than a week. They worked remotely on the record throughout
that winter and spring, adding overdubs in basements and bedrooms
across western North America.
The
new music is underpinned by philosophical conviction and shaped by an
interest in physics, cosmology and mythology. Bellows returned to music
with a renewed sense of the intrinsic value of art and its ability to
express the commonality of human experience. His debut full-length, New Ocean,
offers a mix tape of different kinds of songs hanging out on one record
- love songs that are not necessarily ballads despite their
introspective gauziness, with left turns into drunk-in-the-sun bossa
nova and blue-eyed-soul ruptured by fuzz guitar. Bellows believes that
songs change the fabric of the universe through the very frequencies
they emit. As such, the record attempts to create the world he wants to
see instead of reflect the world that is.
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