Kalamazoo quartet The Go Rounds have been a dominant force in the Michigan music landscape for the last 5 years, releasing a handful of LPs and EPs, and playing countless Great Lakes music festivals. Some of the major acts The Go Rounds have supported include Greensky Bluegrass, Hard Working Americans, Vulpeck, Billy Strings, Keller Williams, Bruce Hornsby, Arlo Guthrie, Asleep at the Wheel, Mickey Hart, and Railroad Earth.
Their songs are catchy, twangy, and trippy – led by the creative force of frontman Graham Parsons (yes, real name), whose spellbinding vocals weave through lush sonic textures as the band puts on a master class of intricate arrangements. Their powerful and dynamic live show has earned them a reputation as one of the best live bands in the Midwest.
On Friday, April 13th the band will release their new EP Code. Today Glide is excited to premiere “Pet Cemetery”, a tune that absolutely captures the magic of The Go Rounds. With island-tinged, twangy psychedelic guitars, the trippy vocals bounce around in a Harry Nilsson kind of way with sunny, feel-good vibes. The band harmonizes together over oddball tempo changes to make this a fun, lumbering rock and roll tune. As a whole the tune has a fun groove to it, bringing to mind 70s rockers while also tapping into a more modern and inventive psych-pop sound.
Reflecting on the song, Graham Parsons has this to say:
“For this recording we took our quartet’s live arrangement and projected it through a lens of ’50s doo wop, ’60s Texas Americana and ’70s psychedelia. Flanged-out acoustic and nonsense syllables, fuzz guitars, latin percussion, laid atop Midwestern rock ‘n roll sensibilities. Beyond the music, ‘Pet Cemetery’ is a call-out of all that is simple and obvious, yet at times so difficult to bear — confronting those sweet, sweet everyday harsh but essential dualities we’re all living in and living out — that classic song fodder ya know: feeling high, feeling low, having money, being broke, holding on and letting go, recognition of the shadow, and knowing that the well we draw from is sometimes the same well in which we’ve laid to rest our most trans-formative and devastating emotions and memories. Those hallowed grounds.”
LISTEN:
Photo credit: John Hanson
