"Rain keeps falling of course / Pistol’s hot on my back / Head so full of sounds / Brain cells burning black..."
The sonic ease and emo unease of "Feet Don't Fail Me" by L.A. / Bay Area based Western States is wonderfully fueled by artful late 90's post grunge psychedelic folk rock vibes and truly compelling storytelling.
As liner notes reveal:
"This song is based on a short story which is itself based on Bowie's occult, Los Angeles, cocaine psychosis phase. It's essentially a tour of the protagonist's deepening delirium and his yearning to escape it. On the production side, we aimed for a kind of Country version of Dark Side of the Moon, though the end result feels more 1993 than 1973"
AND the band, a collaboration of singer/songwriter Nathan Readey, producer/engineer Patrick Vaillancourt, and drummer/shaman John Willhoite, crafted an eloquent imagining that for me does blend 70's gardenrock tones, 90's post folk rock psychedelia and late 2000's desert rock vibes. The production is perfectly not over produced with cleanly rendered vocals that enhance the folk indie vibe. The song is grounded in a kind MTV unplugged vibe, a vibe I always appreciate. When the production strips back and Readey's vocal countenance gets dreadfully intimate singing, "I’ve been spending time / I’ve been spending time / She meets me on the line / Yeah she leaves me on the line", the song sounds so cinematic as if it is no longer a song but a full blown movie that you want to wrap your head around.
When songwriting, when producing, there is an inclination, a huge temptation to go really big. The go big or go home aesthetic tugs at you because you want to be remembered long after the song fades off. The decision to not 'over produce' on "Feet Don't Fail Me" shows artistic wisdom. Less is often times more and it certainly is here.
"Feet Don't Fail Me" is the second track from Western States' eponymous EP out now.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://www.instagram.com/westernstatesofficial
https://westernstatesmusic.bandcamp.com/album/western-states
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxgNZXcugLyDW8zcAmYbnow
Western States is a collaboration between singer/songwriter Nathan Readey, producer/engineer Patrick Vaillancourt, and drummer/shaman John Willhoite. The group’s first, self-titled release is the culmination of countless feverish drives between Los Angeles and the Bay Area, traversing the magnificence and desolation of California’s Central Valley. There’s something of the vastness of that place in these recordings. The songs, rooted in a kind of psychedelic Americana, open a space in the imagination where the horizon is long and the sky a mere extension of the boundless earth. Western States describes that terrain and the states of mind it produces: states of awe, emptiness, delirium. In songs about the West and the provisional worlds we construct there, the music offers paeans both to the desire to settle and the desire to escape.
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