Preparing a new EP for Spring 2021, STEVIERAY LATHAM returns with the first of its spoils: “Gashouse”, streaming everywhere now:
Taken from the upcoming ‘Letters From Suburbia’ (out 12 March 2021), Latham is once again joined for the release by his backing band: The Nomads of Industrial Suburbia.
Loaded with a ricocheting guitar lick cut from the schools of Jack White or Edwyn Collins, “Gashouse” pairs a ghoulish delta-swamp cool to a sixties dance-hall strut.
Written with close friend and fellow art-student: Kyle Rodriguez Tester at his studio outside London, the creative process of “Gashouse” proved to be a more intoxicating experience than either could have possibly imagined…. As Latham reflects:
“Kyle’s studio space was in a wooden shed heated with an old gas heater and one night we were out there writing this song when we both started feeling pretty drowsy and out of it. Neither of us thought anything of it at the time and we finished writing the song before spending the rest of the night in hospital with Carbon Monoxide poisoning.”
“Head down, back to the wall, blue face cause heaven is cold…” sings Latham, his lurking vocal hollow with the beckoning call of the great beyond. Hallmarked with the hammond-organ howls and warped fretboard trippery of a bygone era, “Gashouse” casts a brooding silhouette that will haunt and hook long after the needle has departed the groove.
Drawing on comparisons to Kurt Vile, Blake Mills, Nick Drake & Neil Young, StevieRay Latham is quickly making himself a name to be known with his distinctively dark, melodic, art-folk compositions. With influences ranging from movie scores and sound-art to pre-war Jazz and existentialist literature, the young singer-songwriter signed to the independent At The Helm Records whilst he was still at Art School and since graduating has released two albums, worked on a series of collaborations with visual artists, played festivals and headlined shows across Europe. Receiving airplay from BBC Radio 6 Music and Radio 2, over the years Latham has also been championed by media including Line of Best Fit, Q & Folk Radio UK.
New single “Gashouse” will feature on his upcoming, ‘Letters from Suburbia’; a record which will complete a trilogy of EPs released over the past 18 months. This collection of deeply poetic songs follows last year’s gritty, driving ‘Nomads Of Industrial Suburbia’ and 2019’s experimental-indie release, ‘Suburbia’.
Greek mythology and Gothic Blues collide on the profound 8 and half minute epic ‘Dionysus Blues’, ‘Gashouse’ marries 60’s Garage Rock with tales of La Résistance, whilst ‘Letter from Suburbia’ is a delicately picked folk-song that grows with the horns and percussion of a marching band. ‘Don’t Make Me Love You In Vain’ is a melancholy ballad that emerges from an ambient soundscape before melting into the EP’s atmospheric spoken- word coda, ‘Transient Circles’.
Recorded between Saunton Road Studios, ‘The Wedge’ and his parents’ home in the UK, plus time spent in a winter rental in Chateauneuf la Fôret, France; all songs for the EP were written and produced by StevieRay Latham, apart from “Gashouse” written with Kyle Rodriguez Tester. Mastered by Hippocratic Mastering, additional mixing was completed by Joe Duddell (New Order/Elbow/James) and additional engineering from Nomads’ accomplice Simon Murfet.
All songs are performed by The Nomads of Industrial Suburbia AKA StevieRay Latham (Vocals, Guitars, Bass, Percussion, Piano, Microkorg, Organ) Matt Street (Trumpet), Simon Murfet (Drums) and Laura Porter (Percussion, Backing Vocals).
The Letters from Suburbia EP is released on 12 March 2021. Released with thanks to the Arts Council National Lottery Fund.