Black Mountain<\/strong><\/a> from Vancouver BC is at the forefront of this style, but a newer group is showing that they have a unique take on the subgenre.<\/p>\nLike the label (Sub Pop) that released their 2013 debut The Sun Dogs<\/em>, Rose Windows<\/strong> are from Seattle WA. The seven-member group came together in 2010 when founder Chris Cheveyo<\/strong> (guitar and vocals) decided he wanted to move beyond the confines of heavy rock. The band incorporates eastern influences and a gentle touch into a still-pretty-damn-heavy sound. I asked drummer Pat Schowe<\/strong> how that manifests itself in his playing. He says that although he’s been listening lately to a lot of afrobeat such as Fela Kuti<\/strong>, \u201cFor my playing, it’s more of a traditional Western rock’n’roll.\u201d So the result is, he says, \u201ca sort of East meets West sort of thing. Chris does a lot of Persian-style scales.\u201d And that blends with the rock rhythm section to \u201cmake it special,\u201d he says. That combination introduces the Eastern sounds while not sounding too alien to Western ears unaccustomed to such things. \u201cWhen some Westerners listen to Eastern music, they get scared,\u201d Schowe laughs. And he laughs again when agreeing that Rose Windows’ music is a sort of gateway drug.<\/p>\nProducer Randall Dunn<\/strong>‘s pedigree includes a good deal of extremely heavy artists including SunnO)))<\/strong>. That contrasts with Rose Windows’ balance of heavy and fragile. One can hear nearly as much McDonald and Giles<\/strong> in the sounds on The Sun Dogs<\/em> as the more obvious influences of early 70s rock. Schowe believes that the album would have been much \u201clighter\u201d without the pleasantly heavy hand of Dunn working the boards. \u201cHe’s a producer more than an engineer,\u201d Schowe points out, crediting the producer with a significant degree of creative collaboration that brought out the best the band had to offer. When he would suggest something they hadn’t thought of, Schowe says that the band’s approach was, \u201cForget it; let’s try it!\u201d He laughs and adds, \u201cHe’s the best, but I don’t want to gush about him too much.\u201d<\/p>\n
There’s a degree of subtlety in the band’s sound that makes it especially interesting, and that makes the songs worth listening to over and over again, as they reveal new things. That’s true both of the studio versions on The Sun Dogs<\/em> as well as the band’s live performance, as witnessed last weekend at the Hopscotch Festival in Raleigh NC. \u201cThat’s the whole idea, Schowe insists. \u201cThere are seven people in the band. And to have that many people in a band, you can really layer all these wonderful textures.\u201d<\/p>\nThe Hopscotch date is part of the band’s first trip to the eastern part of the USA. Commenting on the difference between these audiences and the ones back west, Schowe confides that \u201cit’s way better\u201d here. \u201cOur first tour was to Texas; it was a fucking disaster. But when we played in New York, it was packed<\/em>. And,\u201d he gasps, \u201cI saw people mouthing the words to some of our songs!\u201d And he describes a New Haven CT audience as \u201cso quiet, listening to everything.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cWe normally don’t have much banter between our songs,\u201d Schowe says. \u201cWe’re more concerned with creating a ‘feel’ and an experience, giving more of a flow\u201d to the performance. That said, the intimate confines of Raleigh’s Berkeley Cafe meant that the Rose Windows show was something of a communal experience: the stage was far too small to hold a drummer, a keyboard player, two guitarists, a bassist, a flautist and a lead singer, so nearly half of the band stood in front of the stage, toe to to with those of us up front. So the packed house witnessed up close what Schowe describes as \u201cgoing from song to song, seamlessly.\u201d<\/p>\n
The band has tentative plans to re-enter the studio in January 2014, but things are up in the air: \u201cWe’re in this really in-between stage right now,\u201d Schowe admits. \u201cIf somebody offers us something great, and says ‘We want to take you guys out [on tour], we’re going to totally jump on that. But I’m itching to keep writing. Me and Chris and David<\/strong> [Davila<\/strong>, keyboards], and a few of the others, we’re all really anxious to get back to basics and practice [new material] a little bit, too.\u201d<\/p>\nFollow \u201cthe_musoscribe\u201d on Maybe it’s something to do with the soggy Pacific Northwest climate, but there have been a number of bands coming out of the region who play a sort of tribal-psych […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,44,49],"tags":[1009,1885],"class_list":["post-4508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interview","category-live-shows","category-new-release","tag-hopscotch","tag-rose-windows","cat-41-id","cat-44-id","cat-49-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/rose_windows_the_sun_dogs.jpg\")
<\/p>\n