Pax Aeternum presents “LP1”, the debut recordings from Maryland-based cinematic alt-rock trio The Shenandoah Electric Company, formed by members of Pianos Become The Teeth. The album’s cover art, track listing, preorders, and the lead single, “This Has to Work”, have been unveiled.
Winter in the mountains can be unpredictable. The best anyone can do is stockpile wood, food, and whatever vice they need to potentially not see much of the outside world until the first thaw in the Spring. The days grow shorter, moods shift, loneliness sets in. The cold can cut like a knife. But there always comes a morning where something shifts. The days seem to get a little bit longer. Things start to thaw. The season’s cycle and we seemingly are always looking forward to what to prepare for next. Time passes and before we know it, we are preparing for that first frost again. The Shenandoah Electric Company’s “LP1” feels like that cycle. Unpredictable at times while also offering moments of comfort, clarity, and warmth amidst the gloom of Winter.
The Shenandoah Electric Company has been writing their first record over the last five years. What started as an idea of making raw, heavy music began shifting into something more nuanced. Throughout the writing, Wes Young and Michael York had the idea of a band that felt fluid. Something that would ebb and flow with different collaborators and people to focus on the process of thinking and creating differently. They wrote and recorded sketches over the first few years – yet, in the middle of a session one afternoon – they lost everything. Most of the last two years were gone in an instant.
Taking this as an opportunity, they took the remains they could find (a single .wav file of a guitar here, a bounce of roughmixdrumsonly_ver11.mp3 there) and started thinking about how they could take these pieces and form something else out of them. Using the only remains they had left of their previous recorded output as the foundation to build something new on, they began writing a different record along with drummer David Haik. Something that felt a bit more chaotic and volatile. Something angular that felt enveloping and beautiful yet somehow still digital and cold. There was no “studio”, only spaces that provided a backdrop to record whenever they could be it a hotel room, a late 1800s warehouse in which there was a vacant recording studio, or in the mountains in Virginia during a particularly bad cold snap. However, the home of the record is in the woods of Bayse, Virginia where the music and vision both came to fruition in a 1970’s ski resort house.
The Shenandoah Electric Company’s “LP1” was recorded by its members, David Haik, Michael York, and Wes Young, mixed by York, who handled the cover art, and mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege (The Armed, Engine Kid, Glassing).
The band’s Wes Young humbly offers: “‘LP1’ is about our home, the people we’ve known in our brave city for decades and how change comes just the same way the earth moves through its seasons. It just does because it doesn’t know how not to”.
Stream the lead single from The Shenandoah Electric Company, “This Has to Work”, below.
“LP1” will see release on June 3rd, 2022, through all digital providers including Bandcamp where preorders are live here.
Tracklist:
1. This Has to Work
2. Coronation Day
3. Hot Mess
4. Old Boys
5. Pillar of Salt
6. N. Howard St.
7. Late Nights, Early Mornings
8. Fools Like Us
9. Basye
Line-up:
Wes Young – Vocals, guitar, OP1, piano
Michael York – Guitar, bass, samples, synths
David Haik – Drums, percussion, samples
Weblinks:
www.instagram.com/shenandoahelectric
tsec.bandcamp.com
