The Dance, NATL PARK SRVC’s debut album, is more than just an escape — it’s a culmination. Every teenage emotion that felt too big to be real comes swirling together across ten tracks of dynamic indie rock. The Minneapolis, MN group epitomizes these experiences in a way that is familiar yet intimate.
Due out May 14th, their debut full-length record and serves as an expressive outburst of what they describe as “every teenage emotion that felt too big to be real”. With the group’s members currently finding their ways into their early-twenties, those teenage emotions are harnessed, explored and spun back out in sprawling arrangements that explore the conflicting experiences of love, loss, hope, depression, and beyond.
This album is also the group’s first release that is able to most fully embrace the scope of their creative vision. NATL PARK SRVC’s earliest output came via a series of 2019 EPs delivered as a quartet featuring current members Dylan Woytcke (vox/guitar), Jared Leger (guitar/vox), and Nathan Zillmer (bass). In 2020 they sought to expand their sound with the addition of Sam Tudor (violin), Wes Muilenburg (sax), Joe Keyport (trombone), and Sage Livergood (drums) for the EP An Ending Of Sorts, For. Dylan explains, “we wanted to be able to do something huge, and to be able to do it live”. On The Dance they deliver they capture this sound with more punch, grit and drive than ever before.
The group’s specific instrumentation is more happy circumstance, than by grand design. During their performances amongst the continuously burgeoning Twin Cities music scene they’ve been exposed to and inspired by countless innovative musicians. When the band committed to building their sound, there were few questions about who would best help bring the new sounds to life. Ultimately, it’s about community. Musicians whose lives intersected, creativity mutually stoked, and friendships built.
Evoking a bygone time of heart-on-sleeve indie, NATL PARK SRVC is making their presence known and urging you to take up the dance.
Today Glide is excited to premiere “The Right Thing,” one of the standout tracks on the new album. With a loping bass line and an upbeat groove, the song perfectly captures this group’s unique approach to pop music. Orchestration and happy guitar licks meet hopeful harmonies and rollercoaster tempo changes for a song that is inherently catchy. It’s easy to hear groups like Poi Dog Pondering, Dr. Dog, Modest Mouse, and even LCD Soundsystem in their music, but there is also an element of honest indie folk-rock that sets it apart. In particular, the group’s chanted vocal interplay makes this song especially satisfying and cathartic.
The group describes the inspiration and process behind the song:
Jared and Dylan wrote this one in something like January 2020. At that point we sort of had some rough ideas of what we wanted the album to sound in its entirety and had a good chunk of songs written. In the grander narrative of the album this is the first one from the narrator’s perspective. We wanted the lyrics to be an anthem for youthful apathy. It’s a little bit naive and over-romantic. We were just kinda messing around with demos and Jared played the main guitar lead and we just wrote most of the arrangement in one sitting. We wanted the song to have a sort of melancholy feel. We did our final tracking for this song at Hideaway Studios in Minneapolis, MN with Drifter Music Group in June 2020. Our good friend Maddy Siiter sings backup vocals on this track, they are one of my favorite persons/songwriters/musicians that I know. All the gang vocals are from our friends in another Twin Cities group VIAL, and they rock.
LISTEN:
The Dance album is now available for pre-order on blue cassette, here.
Photo credit: Bethünni Schreiner
