Like pretty much every band on Earth, there was a lot of waiting around going on in 2020 for The Parson Red Heads. The completion of their fifth studio album, Lifetime of Comedy, was put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic freezing everybody in place for months, and a process that had begun just prior to the global closure was forced to reconvene at a snail’s pace once studios could open back up for small, intimate sessions.
But Lifetime of Comedy (due out November 13th via Fluff and Gravy Records), while forged from within the timeline of such a touch-and-go era, already had a story of perseverance—a sentiment in their music that longtime fans of the Portland-based Americana/psych band have treasured. The band’s founding guitarist, Sam Fowles, departed the band following the release of their 2017 LP, Blurred Harmony, and the Parsons were forced to ask themselves some tough questions.
The band turned to their live guitarist Jake Smith to step in, and quickly realized they wanted to approach their new record through a new lens.
On Lifetime of Comedy, Evan Way, Smith and the rest of the Parson Red Heads—Brette Marie Way (drums, vocals), Robbie Augspurger (bass), and Raymond Richards (multi-instrumentalist, producer)—navigate new terrain, excavating the bedrock of their well-honed sound and allowing it to be remolded into an altogether new alchemy of songcraft. While still quintessentially a Parson Red Heads record, Lifetime… is, as Way contends, the most collaborative of their recordings to date. Throughout Lifetime of Comedy, Way explores modes of self-reflection, expanding on the thematic anchors of Blurred Harmony’s nostalgia-driven milieu to put the developmental onus on Way alone.
The journey endeavored through repeated listens to Lifetime of Comedy takes the Parsons’ signature harmony-laden psych-roots stew to more uplifting realms, emboldening cathartic moments of moving forward by understanding where you’ve been. Theirs is an amalgam of blustery songwriting, rich in sunny, melodic, intuitive interplay that can only come from playing together for 15 years, which makes the record’s magical symbioses, despite the departing Fowles, all the more remarkable.
If there’s ever been a time to foster and encourage self-reflection, it’s probably right now. The Parson Red Heads have absorbed the trials and tribulations of their long career as musicians, family and friends and come out the other side stronger. And that’s what Lifetime of Comedy is all about.
Today Glide is excited to premiere “Coming Along,” one of the standout tracks on the new album. With an uptempo groove, the song finds the band layering in bright guitar and vocals that bring to mind the more tender moments from R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe. Amidst a shimmering backdrop of dreamy folk-rock, the band members harmonize beautifully and let their vocals drift over twangy steel guitar. The unexpected addition of synth plays up the power pop sound while the sound still stays rooted in indie rock and folk. Bringing to mind left-of-the-dial acts like the Feelies, the song is a both anthemic and soothing, yet it culminates with the band rocking out as they lay down keyboard and a wonderful onslaught of guitar goodness.
Evan Way describes the inspiration behind the song:
“Coming Along” is another song that resulted from countless rehearsals, just spending lots of time playing it through, finding the arrangement that felt right, where each little piece fit. When I first came up with the idea for the song, it was almost more like a Feelies song – fast and insistent, very driving. While we retained the driving feel, over time we chilled it out a bit, made it less frenetic – had it coast a little bit more. It’s a really fun song, because over the course of it’s 5 minutes, it manages to feature each member of the band in really great ways: the engine of the song, Brette and Robbie holding down the driving underpinning that bookends the song; Jake’s beautiful and melodic electric guitar skipping over the top of the driving groove; Raymond’s counterpoint pedal steel swells and Farfisa instrumental breakdown; my gritty guitar solo that comes in towards the end before handing things back off to the power of the full band; and the signature lush vocal harmonies filling out the verses.”
LISTEN:
