Westing Premiere “Back in the Twenties” Video; Future LP Due Feb. 24
Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on February 9th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Visalia, California, heavy rock traditionalists Westing release their new album, Future, on Feb. 24 through RidingEasy Records. The fourth album from the band overall, it’s also the first since they changed their name in 2021 from Slow Season, adopting the moniker from their till-now-most-recent LP, Westing (review here), which was released in 2016, and their first since welcoming All Them Witches guitarist Ben McLeod to the band with founding members guitarist/vocalist Daniel Story Rice, bassist Hayden Doyel and drummer Cody Tarbell, who also recorded the album and has worked with Cloud Catcher and others. Despite the rebrand, Future‘s nine-song/40-minute run remains loyal to their classically-inspired ethic, with a sound that’s growth malleable enough to position Tarbell‘s drums as the John Bonham stomp beneath opener “Back in the Twenties” as Future struts out of the gate, or turn twang into pastoral sentimentalism in the guitars of “Artemisia Coming Down.”
A tour de force for Rice vocally, from the soul-shouts in the leadoff to the attitude-croon of “Nothing New,” the hilarious-even-if-you’re-not-in-on-the-joke (and I’m not, so I’d know) chorus of, “There ain’t no Larry here,” in side B’s “Stanley Wu” and FM-radio-ready falsetto hook that opens wide in capping shuffle rocker “Coming Back to Me,” it is an album of mature performance and craft throughout — something that feels like it could only be made by a band who know who they are as artists and a group — but infectious in its energy just the same, with a sing-along call and response in centerpiece “Big Trouble (In the City of Love)” that, for as based around classic rocking ideals as it is, is so much more about right now than 50 years ago.
Tarbell‘s production, which is crisp, modern, clear and organic, helps assure that while Future is most certainly in conversation with the past and lyrics like those of “Back in the Twenties” place it squarely in the present — “Another lost generation/Here come the good times/Here come the fascists…” — its sound is nonetheless forward-looking in its realization of the material. It’s not futurist, or sci-fi, or cloyingly trying to be something other than it is for artsy kudos. In the spirit of, say, a band dropping an established moniker after about a decade and moving ahead with a new one, Future is unhindered by its classic aspects.
One would be hard-pressed to think of another American band working at Westing‘s level in the stylistic niche they are. In Europe, the names come easier, with the likes of Graveyard, Kadavar, and hosts of others, but especially on this record, the band distinguish themselves in method and dynamic from the underground pack on either continent. And more than the sound of Future, it’s the songs. After “Back in the Twenties” gives over to the fuzzier but likewise memorable rollout of “Nothing New,” they turn to the atmospheric “Lost Riders Intro,” a two-minute stretch of ambient guitar and drone ahead of “Lost Riders” itself, the central riff there seeming to call out Journey and Thin Lizzy via The Lord Weird Slough Feg (the latter is a stretch, but it’s there) with a moodier stateliness.
The party picks up as “Big Trouble (In the City of Love)” revives the Zeppelin thread to finish out side A — and the aforementioned “Stanley Wu” will make you believe dancing days are here again in short order — but though “Lost Riders” is shorter than “Nothing New,” its dual guitar leads and methodical delivery are neither as upbeat as much of what surrounds nor lost in a brooding mire, establishing a kind of middle ground that pushes outward the expectations for the rest of Future to come, so that when they hit into “Artemisia Coming Down” with its mellow, atmospheric beginning, graceful melody and highlight finishing solo, there’s precedent for the going.
Leading side B, “Artemisia Coming Down” — on the vinyl, “Lost Riders Intro” is integrated into “Lost Riders” as well, so it breaks down to four cuts on each side, eight total; of course it matters less when you’re listening to the album straight through — is another classic turn that Westing make theirs, fleshing out the mood of “Lost Riders” while shifting toward a direction of its own, smoothly shifting into the acoustic-led “Silent Shout,” which makes its title into a kind of single-breath repetition, almost an afterthought worked into its verse lines, so that by the last time it comes around near the song’s finish, it’s expected and welcome, a particularly floaty ’70s dreaminess that also serves to set up the arena-style chorus of “Coming Back to Me,” after the uptick in physical movement that “Stanley Wu” brings. An homage to a local bartender of the same name, its lyrics are less generally relatable, perhaps, than some of the material here, but it’s easy to get wrapped up in the title character’s persona as channeled through the band’s. To put it another way, they bring you into the place, the bar, the character, the story.
This is true of Future across its entire span, and it comes back to the quality of songwriting at work. Many aspects of Westing‘s sound are pointedly not revolutionary. They are classic heavy rockers playing to that ideal, less now than when Slow Season released 2014’s Mountains (review here), perhaps, but they know where their roots lie nonetheless. And as the already noted shuffle of “Coming Back to Me” lets its tension go for that chorus about being free, they make you believe it. Not everybody can do that, in this microgenre or any other, let alone turn the song back around to its boogie and proceed onward like nothing ever happened, until the next chorus arrives. And not for want of trying.
To call it graceful would maybe undercut some of the edges purposefully left rougher — like how the kick drum in “Back in the Twenties” is supposed to thud like that, and the back and forth of “more” and “never enough” in “Big Trouble (In the City of Love),” with “more” throaty and held out so that it’s “moh-ore” with Rice answering himself before McLeod rips out neither the first nor the last righteous solo — but it is lucid and tasteful. Westing may be a new incarnation of what Slow Season was, but part of that is the clear benefit of that band’s experience and chemistry that’s on display throughout these tracks, even with the change in personnel involved in making the record. It moves you like the best of rock and roll can, makes you remember why you fell in love with groove in the first place, and whether it’s up or down at a given moment, or raucous or subdued, it’s got its heart right on its sleeve and craft that’s in a class of its own. One would be a fool to ask more of them than they give here.
The video for “Back in the Twenties” premieres below, followed by the band’s bio… which I wrote. That’s right. It’s a bio I wrote, and I’m posting it under the review of the album, which I also wrote (just now, in fact). In the interest of full disclosure, I was compensated for writing the bio (it’s why I put the bio in blue, to distinguish that promotional content from this editorial content), and in the interest of context, I’ll point you back to that 2014 review to stand for how long I’ve been writing about the band before I got a Paypal kick to do it for the text below. I don’t know if it matters, but there you go.
Enjoy:
Westing, “Back in the Twenties” video premiere
“We’ve never been averse to a self-imposed challenge, really.” – Daniel Story Rice, Westing
Late in 2021, Slow Season announced they’d become Westing, and that Ben McLeod (also of Nashville’s All Them Witches) was now in the four-piece on lead guitar alongside guitarist, vocalist and keyboardist Daniel Story Rice, bassist Hayden Doyel and drummer/recording engineer Cody Tarbell. Their new LP (fourth overall for RidingEasy), Future, is not coincidentally titled.
Says Rice, “We wanted to hit the reset button on some things and so we included a new band name to that list. Fresh start, for the psychological effect of it. We first met Ben in 2014 opening for All Them Witches in San Diego, and we did that again in 2016 and he and Cody corresponded about tape machines, music production, and other similar nerd stuff. We started swapping a few ideas early in 2021 and then flew him out for four days in August 2021. We got Future mostly down in that short span and did some remote stuff for overdubs, but nothing major. Obviously, our creative processes jelled pretty well to allow for such an efficiently productive session.”
So the story of Westing, and of Future, is about change, but the music makes itself so immediately familiar, it’s so welcoming, that it hardly matters. For about 10 years, the Visalia, California, outfit wandered the earth representing a new generational interpretation of classic heavy rock. The tones, warm. The melodies, sweet. The boogie, infectious. They went to ground after supporting their 2016 self-titled third album, and clearly it was time for something different.
Listening to Future opener “Back in the Twenties,” the message comes through clear (and loud) that however much Westing’s foundations might be in ‘70s styles, the moment that matters is now. It’s the future we’re living in, not the future that was. The big Zeppelin vibes at the outset and on “Big Trouble (In the City of Love)” and the local-bartender remembrance “Stanley Wu,” the dare-to-sound-like-Rocka-Rolla “Lost Riders” and the softshoe-ready shuffle of “Coming Back to Me” that leads into the payoff solo for the entire record, on and on; these pieces feed into an entirety that’s somehow loyal to homage while embodying a vitality that can only live up to the title they’ve given it.
“To me, ‘future’ is a word that embodies both hope and dread,” explains Rice, “and the future seems to be coming at us pretty quick these days. In some ways, it really feels like I am living in “the future,” as if I time traveled here and don’t really belong. That feeling pervades this band’s ethos in some ways. I thought Instagram was a steep climb until I met TikTok.”
Is Future the future? Hell, we should be so lucky. What Westing manifest in these songs is schooled in the rock of yore and theirs purely, and in that, Future looks forward with the benefit of the lessons learned across three prior full-lengths (and the accompanying tours) while offering the kind of freshness that comes with a debut. No, they’re not the same kids who released Mountains in 2014, and the tradeoff is being able to convey maturity, evolving creativity and stage-born dynamic on Future without sacrificing the spirit and passion that has underscored their work all along. – Words by JJ Koczan
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