While gigging across the country recently, a copy of The Grapes of Wrath made its way around the van of Charleston-based indie-rock band Easy Honey. The Depression-era Steinbeck novel and “some movies about mountaineering” remained front-of-mind during their latest writing cycle, culminating in the Plaid EP, out today via Third Brother Records. A swift, five-song smattering of surf-rock, basement-indie, and some harmonica licks for good measure, Plaid takes the carefree euphoria of summiting a peak and filters it through the melancholy haze of the Dust Bowl. The result? An atmosphere Easy Honey says feels like “dusk in western North Carolina in March.”
Plaid finds its home in the juxtaposition between the quiet isolation of the mountains and the chaos of the live show. “We are in a band that plays live often, and we really connect with audiences in the live setting,” Easy Honey note in a joint statement. “We use that as a guiding light while recording—we are chasing goosebumps, not perfection. The pre-production and recording were all done in remote cabins, so it was sort of interesting taking a lot of specific ‘real world’ topics, and reflecting on them in a very quiet, remote place.”
Catch Easy Honey live as they embark on their “Plaid Tour,” and listen to the Plaid EP in full below.
