Brooklyn's The Lone Bellow seemed to arrive fully formed: Its self-titled 2013 debut came stuffed with intricately assembled bundles of crowd-pleasing folk-pop, each more dramatic and infectious than the last. Charismatic, photogenic, endlessly hooky — The Lone Bellow has been the complete package since day one.
A follow-up album, Then Came The Morning — produced by The National's Aaron Dessner — comes out at the beginning of 2015, and The Lone Bellow has lost none of its sleekly soaring charm. Listen to the title track here, and you'll hear a band that's climbed the Van Morrison family tree straight to its highest branch.
That said, when writing about "Then Came The Morning," singer Zach Williams points to a different influence altogether:
I was listening to a lot of Vegas-era Elvis when I started writing it. It has tinges of our gospel-music upbringing: The piano melody especially highlights the way my grandmother can bang on her old upright when she sings "Uncloudy Day" every Thanksgiving. We recorded all the vocals together in the old church sanctuary at Dreamland Studios, and Aaron Dessner wrote all the wind, brass and strings with Vegas Elvis in mind.
Then Came The Morning comes out in January on Descendant Records.
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