SONG PREMIERE: Raygun Carver Drop Ambitious Melodic Folk Narrative On “Houses We Haunted”

Veering between lush folk and orchestral nods, Raygun Carver surely sounds bigger than its parts. With warm earnest singing, brooding openheartedness, and a kaleidoscope of genres, this musical project of Pacific NW artist Michael Soiseth is surely a name we deserver to hear more of. Bad Thing, the follow-up to the artists’ 2020 LP Moon Fields Yawning, is out this April and is the result of a focused two-year-long creative effort.  

The son of a jazz musician/published composer/music teacher, Soiseth spent his formative years playing up and down the pacific coast as a bass player in an assortment of NW bands, and released several records as ‘Sutrobath’ along with co-partner Robert Wollam. The duo received much critical acclaim for their releases Spirit of the Audio and sophomore effort Aquatica before disbanding after their last two EP’s- Reptile and Coyote.

Soiseth devoted the next few years to the sport of freediving, gliding down into the dark, cold waters of the Pacific Northwest and into the soundless, weightless void where he found solace and release from his years as a struggling artist. After seven years submerged into this watery bliss, one day he found himself alone in an empty room that had an old, beat-up acoustic guitar. Picking it up he began to strum… Soon songs ‘poured out like water’ and Raygun Carver was born. 

Some of the songs on Bad Thing have been kicking around Soiseth’s heard for years, but he was never able to write the definitive versions until now. The bulk of the record was written in Port Angeles during the span following the release of Moon Fields Yawning. The one cover, Bob Dylan’s, “Simple Twist of Fate”, is unusual for Soiseth. “I typically have not done covers but this one called out to me and hence it is on the record” he says. 

In addition to Soiseth, Bad Thing features Phil Madeira (Emmylou Harris) on keys, accordion, and slide and electric guitar. Ryan Svendsen (Elton John) played the trumpet, while baritone and slide guitars were performed by Jay Stapley (Roger Waters).

Glide is premiering “Houses We Have Haunted,” off Bad Thing, a ravishing and ambitious track that sounds eerily familiar at first, but once the song unravels, it presents newfound lyrics and musical combinations quite unique to the ear.

“I wrote Houses based on an image I had of an abandoned home that was buried in snowdrifts. It was a matter of back-engineering to create a narrative around that image and the story that was embedded in those walls, ”says Soiseth.

Related Content

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

New to Glide

Keep up-to-date with Glide

Twitter