Album Premiere: Source Material — ‘Constant Sunrise’
Posted: by The Editor
Portland songwriter Collin Kritz, who you may remember as the frontman of the now-defunct and beloved Portland band Snow Roller, spent years trying to navigate through the DIY scene before finally deciding to call it quits shortly after the release of his band’s final album. On their swan song, the fuzzy and excellent Y2K, Kritz documented the general malaise of growing older and becoming fed up with the more trivial aspects of your life, and in hindsight, it seems as if the album was also a reflection of the burnout he was beginning to feel from the music industry. In an era where an artist’s success often feels like it boils down to how many retweets they can get, it’s not hard to understand why Kritz would become jaded with music altogether.
After a brief hiatus, Kritz has teamed up with members of the also-defunct Laughing Stock and Neilson Family to form Source Material, a back to the basics project that emphasizes playing music for the fun of it and nothing more. Their debut, which we’re premiering below, is both playful and earnest, driven by guitar heroics and the newfound freedom of being able to create on your own terms. Drawing influence from bands such as Polvo and Sebadoh, as well as the Grateful Dead, in spirit not style, Constant Sunrise is a wonderful collection of breezy slacker-pop anthems that encapsulate the heyday of college-rock. Tracks like “Luxury of Choice” and “Alibi” successfully blend serpentine guitar lines with skittering rhythms, while album highlight “Cincinnati Chili” distills their formula into an infectious and fuzzy earworm.
Stream it below:
Constant Sunrise is out tomorrow via Slang Church
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Michael Brooks // @nomichaelbrooks
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