Co-Pilgrim – ‘Slows to Go’ (album stream) (premiere)

It’s easy to label Oxford band Co-Pilgrim as “twee”, but dig a little deeper and you’ll find that the band has more classic American rock, folk, and country influences than, say, anything C86-related. With its rich vocal harmonies, new album Slows to Go beautifully evokes the Byrds, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and Big Star. The specter of Gram Parsons and Alex Chilton loom over the record as well, as singer-songwriter Mike Gale comes through with gem after gem, often augmented by rich folk rock guitar and swooning pedal steel. And for good measure, the band’s never hesitant to throw in a little shoegazey distortion for effect, as on the Teenage Fanclub-esque “Flood of Tears”.

“We recorded the bulk of the album over four days in Truck Studio near Oxford,” the band tells PopMatters. “We spent a day each on vocals, guitars, drums and bass, then a couple of days here and there for Joe [Bennett, guitar] to add his magic and make it all come together. We’ve got into a good rhythm with recording now, hopefully that comes across on the album. The writing was pretty quick too, I had most of an album written about a month or so before we planned to record but didn’t like it much so started writing these other songs instead and they ended up replacing all of the original songs.

Slows to Go will be released on 16 October.