CORNISH-English folk-rock sextet Red River Dialect have released a surprise three-track, digital EP, Overabundance, book-ending the album from last year, Abundance Welcoming.
The EP, which features three tracks recorded at sessions for the album in Carmarthenshire in late 2018, is out on Paradise of Bachelors today (July 3rd).
Singer-songwriter and guitarist David Morris writes: “Three songs couldn’t make it to the Abundance Welcoming Ghosts LP and have haunted it these past months.
“This EP contains perhaps the most intense and most free-flowing Red River Dialect moments, and the album feels somehow incomplete without them; at the same time they stand apart, being the three songs recorded during the album sessions that hark back to older times and well-worn themes.”
David gave Backseat Mafia a sneak preview of the three songs. Lead track “Front Row” describes the emotional end of an evening after missing a Bill Callahan show: some sweetly yearning violin from Ed Sanders suddenly explodes into an autumnal folk snarl, all frustration at the missed gig, before finding catharsis with a homeless woman: “She said her dog usually hated men/And I felt good about that then”, the song fading to hush in electric piano and free percussion.
Centrepiece “Old Afternoon” recalls a final meal with a father. It has the space and magic of Richard Thompson in his early 70s’ pomp, as well the power of the abovementioned Smog man.
The EP rounds off with minor-interval instrumental “Slinky”: take Felt on one of their instrumental excursions and splice some Papa M in, and you’re somewhere in the ballpark. Folk-rock to post-rock?
All in all, it’s a very fine 13 minutes indeed; powerful, moving and punchy, British folk-rock at its finest.
Overabundance is available to purchase at www.paradiseofbachelors.com/red-river-dialect and https://redriverdialect.bandcamp.com/
