Slothrust - The Pact (2018)

Slothrust is principal songwriter, guitar player and unrepentant aesthete Leah Wellbaum, with drummer Will Gorin and bassist Kyle Bann. On their fourth full-length album The Pact, Slothrust constructs a luscious, ethereal cosmos perforated with wormy portals and magic wardrobes, demonstrating more clearly than ever the band's deft shaping of contrasting sonic elements to forge a muscular sound that's uniquely their own. Bizarre and mundane, tender and confident. The awkward duality of the forever outsider, rightly reclaimed as power. This is The Pact. Produced and engineered by Billy Bush in Los Angeles (the band's new home base), Slothrust's new album is a confident journey across 12 songs that oscillate between a quietly reflective tenderness and a slick, sleek confidence; balancing playful innocence with ballsy swagger. "This is the most fun I've ever had making a record," Wellbaum confirms. "We were able to take risks. I'm saying yes more than no these days." Bush brought a rugged-lush sensibility to the proceedings, assuredly guiding the band into new territory. "I can't say I've come across a band like this where every player is equally strong" Bush noted. "Typically there is one stronger talent and one that lags behind, but something I find really unique about Slothrust is that everybody really is extraordinary in their ability to discuss, understand, hear and play music." "We had infinite possibilities with Billy at the helm," Bann says. "Whereas in the past we strove to make a record that would accurately capture the way we sound live," continues Gorin, "this time we explored making a studio album. We let the experience take us somewhere new." Album opener and lead single "Double Down," commands without cawing for attention - A lurching rock song with a subversive pop hook, ripped with screeching distortion that gives way to the chorus, an irreverent, emphatically cool takedown of all doubters. "Peach" showcases Wellbaum's penchant for quirky wordplay as it free-associates "Jack-O-Lantern.