Atlanta-based Cosmic Americana collective Slow Parade, led by singer-songwriter Matthew Pendrick, are finally prepping the release of their long awaited sophomore LP, Hi-Fi LowLife, due early in 2020. We’re happy to premiere the first single “Let it Bleed” today!
Matthew Pendrick has become a prolific musician around the Atlanta music scene, playing in at least 6 different bands, but who’s counting anyway. You can pretty much find him playing around town and the southeast every week in some form or fashion. In 2016 he released the first Slow Parade record, Big Plans, showing off Pendrick’s stark songwriting with cosmic undertones. While the hardworking musician’s time is split amongst different projects, the last few years a lot of work has gone into bringing Hi-Fi LowLife to fruition by Pendrick and his band of friends spread from Athens to Atlanta.
The album is a record that searches for answers to the issues that are surrounding us in this modern life featuring everything from slow burners to rippers. A bigger and bolder Slow Parade is emerging as each song is carefully crafted to pull the emotions from the sounds.
The first single “Let it Bleed” is one of those big rippers showing off the forward steps Slow Parade has taken. Featuring Pendrick’s familiar bluesy drawl with poignant lyrics, the whiskey stained song does everything bigger with big pianos, riffs that fall from the heavens, a chorus that will have you wanting to sing along, and just enough psychedelics to keep the trip colorful.
In fact, the euphoric closing chorus was created through a unique method to create the song ending that really ties it all together. Pendrick told us that “On this song we actually had about a dozen or so people call in and we recorded everyone singing the outro together over speaker phone with a pile of phones all stacked around the mic.” Beautiful.
Said Matthew Pendrick “This song “Let it Bleed” arrived to me at the end of a very turbulent period of my life. I think i’d just gotten out of a 5 year long relationship, had my car maliciously destroyed by some entitled yuppie, had my main band of 6 years break up, been robbed a few times and returned home to find my collection of letters and photos and sentimental items littered all up my street, etc. When you’re going through a lot of difficult things, it’s easy to try to hide from your emotions, medicate yourself or just live it denial. On one level, the song is just about being with your emotions and allowing yourself to experience them honestly and be present for that part of your life and what it has to show you without having to “make peace” with everything. Or as I put it in the song “unclog that hole under your heart, don’t let the cowards and lily livered’s feed.””
Listen to the premiere of “Let it Bleed” above. Also if you are so inclined, consider contributing to Slow Parade’s Kickstarter where they’ve got all kinds of cool promotions where your pledge can help them bring this new album to vinyl. KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN HERE
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I’ve been following Damon Moon for nearly 8 years almost??? Found him at an online indie music magazine that I wrote for and then ended up interviewing them in Philadelphia and giving his band (Damon Moon and the whispering wanderers) a place to crash that night! I’ll follow anything he does until the next solar flare knocks out our satellites in space lol. He’s good people.