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Oshima Bothers, a Japanese-Italian alt-pop sibling duo from the coast of Maine, make open hearted music with smooth blood harmonies and groovy guitar lines. Louisa Stancioff joins as special guest.
ABOUT OSHMIA BROTHERS
After five months of not picking up an instrument, The Dead Tongues’ Ryan Gustafson wanted to get rid of everything that was tied to his identity as a musician. He even thought about changing his name. He was getting ready to throw out old notebooks packed with years of material but, for some reason, he decided to stop and go through them, just to see if there was anything worth saving. And sure enough, he found some images and lyrics, threads from former selves he didn’t want to lose. Thus was the catalyst for Dust, his fifth and best album as The Dead Tongues.
Gustafson recorded Dust in nine days, the fastest he’d ever recorded anything. It was the fastest he’d ever written anything, too – in the past, writing a song would take months, but this time he so me how felt freer, and wanted to have fun. The record was recorded at Sylvan Esso’s studio, Betty’s, in the woods of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
He built it out with help from a number of his musician friends - Joe Westerlund (Watchhouse, Megafaun, Califone) on drums, Andrew Marlin (Watchhouse) on mandolin, backing vocals from Alexandra Sauser - Monnig and Molly Sarlé of Mountain Man, among others.
Dust is meant to be listened to while taking a night drive, farflung and roving and existential. Somewhere between the expansiveness of American jamband and the banjo-centric folk songwriting of Gustafson’s Appalachia home. Gustafson explains the thematic throughline succinctly: “It’s this idea of uprooting and rebirth and cycles, and the past informing the future, and the future informing the past. There is no single story. Everything is connected.”
ABOUT LOUISA STANCIOFF
“There are times in life when you’re so present, so fully immersed in the moment that you can catch a glimpse of another universe, of a realm beyond our own,” says Louisa Stancioff. “It might last for a second or an hour, it might come in the midst of bliss or sadness, you might be alone or with a lover, but when it happens, there’s nothing quite like it.”
When We Were Looking, Stancioff’s stunning Yep Roc debut, is full of those moments. Written and recorded through a period of deep heartbreak and uncertainty, the collection is the raw and unflinching work of a nomadic soul who spent stints living in Alaska, California, New York, and North Carolina before returning home to her native Maine, one that holds nothing back in its bittersweet reckonings with pain, healing, acceptance, and growth.
Stancioff writes with a cinematic eye here, conjuring up richly detailed stagings for her emotionally-charged character studies, and the guitar-and-synth-focused arrangements are immersive and nuanced to match, thanks in part to the evocative sonic landscaping of producer/keyboardist Sam Kassirer (Josh Ritter, Craig Finn), who proves to be an ideal creative foil on the record.
Add it all up and you’ve got a dreamy, nostalgic Polaroid of an album that blurs the lines between indie stoicism and folk sincerity, a lush, cathartic work that hints at everything from Phoebe Bridgers and Arlo Parks to Big Thief and Waxahatchee as it learns to find the beauty in grief and rebirth.