The solstice has come and gone, and as sunlight slowly creeps back across the freezing plains of winter, we have the perfect opportunity to cozy up to the recent 7” by Shadow Band.
Led by legendary New Brunswick, NJ songwriter Mike Bruno (formerly of the always-shifting Black Magic Band), Philadelphia’s Shadow Band excels at a specific strain of hand made, freaked-out weirdness that has long flourished along the Northeast Corridor. The band’s recent platter on Mexican Summer provides two tracks which conjure up a cloudy, sage scented, vaguely ancient world, and the fidelity upgrade from Bruno’s previous 4-track work is just pronounced enough to make the arrangements of his troupe of many players ring clear through the fog. Easy references could be made to freak folk or Elephant 6, but this is what it sounds like: friends summoning deep tones in a Philly house, a communal vibe captured well in the band’s roundtable video for “Moonshine,” which you may watch above.
The “Eagle Unseen”/”Moonshine” single is available now, with a full length coming early in the new year. Stream the record below.
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