Upcoming Releases
Auckland, New Zealand's Swallow The Rat have announced their upcoming debut full-length, Leaving Room, due out April 24th from Shifting Sounds. The album is a compelling tangle of driving post-punk rhythms and raw, shoegaze-tinged guitars, as evidenced by its first single "Bird of Ill". The song highlights Swallow The Rat's ability to assuredly build tension from hazy atmospherics to an absolutely towering conclusion, all expertly captured by producer/engineer Nick Abbott (Foals, Pulled Apart By Horses, Robert Plant).
Swallow The Rat's songs often hinge on an ability to feel spontaneous yet deliberate--tightly wound intensity that only unravels when the band is ready. It's a creative chemistry rooted in the merging of musical backgrounds: guitarist/vocalist Sam Vercoe, drummer Hayden Fritchley, and bassist/vocalist Stephen Horsley all hail from Auckland, but it wasn’t until guitarist Brian Purington—a native of Austin, Texas—moved to New Zealand and began collaborating with Vercoe that Swallow The Rat was born. Adding Purington’s uniquely American influences and vibrant psychedelic flourish to Vercoe, Fritchley, and Horsley’s foundation of wiry New Zealand post-punk resulted in the collision of muscular riffs and shimmering textures that defines Swallow The Rat’s sound. It's the perfect accompaniment to Leaving Room's lyrical explorations of loss, change, and disenfranchisement with modern life.
Track listing:
- New Cross
- Hey Yeah
- Bird of Ill
- Cold Moon
- Chromos
- Echoes of a Tide
- Billy
- First World
- Shifting Sand
- Leaving Room
