· By John Frazier
Welcome Allen Epley to the Spartan Family. Debut Solo Album "Everything" Out January 6th
Spartan Records proudly presents Everything, the debut solo LP from Allen Epley (Shiner, The Life and Times). As a child, Epley spent hours imprinting his parents' record collection on his psyche. Giant headphones secure, he would pore over the cover art and liner notes and enter the world wrought by the giants of AM Gold — Bread, James Taylor, Carol King, Three Dog Night, Blood Sweat and Tears, 5th Dimension. Yet the music he would make in the 90’s and 00’s with his highly influential bands doesn’t reveal these easy-listening origins. Shiner and The Life and Times reflected more opaque images of bands like Swervedriver, Slint, early Smashing Pumpkins and Failure. The smooth grooves and discernable lyrics about love -- found and lost -- of the 70’s songsters of his adolescence hadn’t come back into view for him until 2018. While working on a batch of compositions for film/tv, Epley realized these ghosts had never left him but instead had embedded themselves in his subconscious. The result of this retrospective journey is Everything, a record that begs and rewards repeated listenings. It’s a rich production that echoes the AM Gold of his childhood but reaches into artistic territories that were generally reserved for Elliott Smith and Sea Change-era Beck.
Listen to the debut single "Thousand Yard Stare" at BrooklynVegan and pre-order / pre-save the album on limited edition vinyl. The first pressing is limited to only 300 copies on random color swirled vinyl and no two copies are alike!
