The group’s first music in 6 years, Stages deals with the passing of Thomas and Alex’s mother. These 7 expansive tracks transcend their roots in grief, reaching through love, loss, mourning and hope, with the ambitious pallet of The Electric Soft Parade.
“Several years after our mother passed away, I sat down one day and wrote the rough shape of an album…” explains Alex “I took on the multiple perspectives of the experience of death and grief – trying to imagine my mother’s feelings and how she experienced both her life and her death, as well as how others in the family may have felt and reacted, as well as my own sense of overcoming this grief.”
Written and sung by Alex, produced and recorded by Thomas, the album is truly collaborative and represents a new period in the band’s output. “My writing having been less than forthcoming in recent years – I have now hit a peak, I hope.” says Alex, “I am extremely proud of these pieces of work, both in their honesty and their construction. It is a strange feeling to be a fan of one’s work and genuinely satisfied and engaged with it: often in the past, I have felt I have ‘got away’ with things, or not been able to fully realise my ideas. Not so here.”
Having worked on the songs with a new group of musicians and completing the recording of a first draft of the album, the band decided to shelve the project. A year or so later, Thomas and Alex decided to bring this project back from retirement and re-tool it, re-imagine it, and re-record it, thus presenting their 5th album as The Electric Soft Parade, “our personal tribute to our mother, our family, and ourselves”.
For an album rooted in loss, there is an undeniably uplifting tone to the record, “Hopefully, this personal vision and interrogation of grief may provide others with a roadmap of sorts to navigate these deep, dark, universal feelings – not in a depressive, maudlin manner, but rather with an honest, reflective, and ameliorating tone.”
Stages is available now on CD/LP/download via the band’s own Chord Orchard imprint.
“Exquisitely lachrymose, Saturday’s gloom is backlit by warm, Richard Hawley-ish guitar. Six more long songs show their melodiousness and lightly-worn wisdom.”
★★★★
MOJO
“Heartbreaking….an astutely painted picture of bereaved longing.”
★★★★
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