Pittsburgh four-piece The Red Western have taken on the task of writing and recording two separate EPs, to be released simultaneously in just over two weeks’ time. For this, your ears are sure to be grateful.

To give you an idea of what to expect from The Red Western’s newest output, we have the distinct honor of premiering one of their two upcoming efforts in full for your listening pleasure. Sirens, which you can experience below, boasts five cuts of big, bright, full-of-life indie rock with tinges of pop (delightfully reminiscent of Camera Obscura), Americana and even a little bit of alt-emo in the vein of Run For Cover Records acts like Petal. With a commanding lead vocal from Lauren DeLorenze and impressive instrumentation front to back, we believe Sirens to be one of the first great releases of 2016, and we can tell you now that its counterpart in Arrows is just as good.

In regards to the band’s current direction in sound and the idea behind releasing two EPs concurrently, The Red Western explained the following to UTG via email:

“The band lost a founding member unfortunately, just a bit after our last EP release. This caused us to have to rethink and retool how we played our older songs and rethink how writing would occur moving forward. In essence, around half of the songs were things [guitarist] Jon Gunnell had been working on for himself prior to Soisson’s departure. Though these songs had a different vibe than our prior stuff for sure, but we loved them and decided to roll with this different sound. The rest of the songs were a collaboration effort by the whole band, save for one tune that Soisson had contributed just before having to leave. This approach gave us two sets of songs with pretty district feels (at least we thought so), so we decided to do something a bit different and release them in separate packages, kind of a Vol. A and Vol. B type thing. Also we hated that folks on streaming sites rarely got to the last tracks on our LP, so we really prefer the format of an EP regardless. So ya know, why not just do two?!”

Both Sirens and its accompanying EP, Arrows, are set to release on February 5 with a release show the following night to take place at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. All info for the special event can be found here.

*feature photo courtesy of Benjie Heasley
*release show poster courtesy of Joe Mruk

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Brian Leak

Editor-In-Chief. King of forgetting drinks in the freezer. Pop culture pack rat. X-Phile. LOST apologist.

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