Delta Spirit’s rough barroom pop is its own creature, with jangly pianos, rattling drums, and scruffy acoustic guitars all making a thrilling ruckus. Loose, raw, rootsy and a bit funky with sandpaper snarl vocals.
When it came time to record Delta Spirit’s third album, the band members knew one thing: It was time to shake off the stylistic labels that have shadowed them since they formed in San Diego, CA, in 2005. Though lyricists Matt Vasquez and Kelly Winrich were grateful for the warm reviews that their previous albums Ode To Sunshine (2008) and History From Below (2010) received, they were perplexed at being called “rootsy Americana” or “twangy folk.” In their eyes, Delta Spirit has always been a thoroughly modern rock band, and, with their self-titled new album, they set out to prove it.
We found the sound that we’ve been looking for, that we’ve been growing into, and as soon as we hit on it, we ran with it,” Vasquez says. “That’s why it’s a self-titled record, so we could connect our identity with the album, because this album is what we think Delta Spirit is. People make records for their time and we wanted to make one for our time. Just like novelists want to write the Great American Novel, we wanted to make a Great American Record. Not one about yesterday, but one about right now.”
To help them realize their vision, Delta Spirit recruited producer Chris Coady, not only for his indie-rock credentials (he’s worked with Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio, Beach House, and Smith Westerns, among others), but also because, with five strongly opinionated band members, Delta Spirit needed a producer who wouldn’t be pushed around easily. “We also wanted a great engineer and someone who knew how to make sounds that didn’t sound stock and average,” Vasquez says of Coady, who brought in a home-built synthesizer, which was used on the song “Home.”
Print Seating Chart
