Back in March, Kentucky folk-rockers Bendigo Fletcher unveiled the grungy single “Evergreen” which landed somewhere between the post-Woodstock folk scene of the ’70s and that decade’s burgeoning hard rock movement, the two polarized genres held together by the snakey prog structures that were also popular in that era. Today the band’s following that single up with another track, “Sugar in the Creek,” which will act as the opening track to the group’s newly announced debut album Fits of Laughter, on which “Evergreen” will also appear.
A more subdued single than the one that preceded it, “Sugar in the Creek” aligns more with the late-’00s indie-folk movement, echoing the sounds of groups like Blitzen Trapper with a banjo steering the band through the track. “The banjo riff lived in my head as a kind of internal rhythm for a long while before we built ‘Sugar in the Creek’ around it,” frontman Ryan Anderson reveals, “so it feels fitting to sing about dancing when we play it. I think the words came during a personal journey to embracing ‘I don’t know’ as a perfectly suitable answer for big questions, perhaps having felt encouraged from reading a feature on some of Devendra Barnhart’s related thoughts. It’s a liberating, honest bridge of a phrase that makes me want to dance.”
The track arrives with a colorful video animated by Maria Jesus Contreras in which the psychedelic fictional city of Bendigo echoes the balance of surrealism and everyday life featured on Twin Peaks. Stream the single here, and watch the video below.
