Austinites Duncan Fellows have been keeping their Bandcamp page fresh with new singles and EPs for years now, but news of The Sadlands today only marks the second time the five-piece (six-piece if you include the dog) has ventured into full-length territory. Set for release in just under a month, the LP follows 2017’s Both Sides of the Ceiling, as well as a string of EPs dating back to their college days in 2013.
Along with the news come two new singles marking two extremes for the project—the first introducing Sadlands as a hazy collection of lo-fi songs and the latter suggesting there’s a little more garage-rock muscle in the mix. Despite this disparity, co-vocalist/guitarist Cullen Trevino attests to its unified themes.
“My natural inclination is to avoid the past—run from it really—even though I understand it’s Sisyphean,” he explains. “Like a child trying to escape his own shadow. This album, The Sadlands, is more of an acknowledgement than an answer. More of a nod to repression than catharsis. A bit like saying to perceptions of the past, ‘I see you, frozen in time, spun in swells and falls, codified in imagery and metaphor. You exist.’ And that’s fine by me.”
He continues, “Growing up I thought that I’d understand more about myself and the world as time passed through me, but I think now that it is in fact the opposite. Still we make things. Trying to pull some beauty from life’s doldrums. And give it away hoping to make someone we don’t know happy, or, more honestly, ourselves.”
Hear the two new tracks below, and expect The Sadlands out October 16. In the meantime, play their new video game.
