ROSE OF THE WEST ANNOUNCE BRAND NEW FULL-LENGTH ALBUM,
NO THINGS PERMANENT
FIRST SINGLE, “COME AND FIND ME,” A SULTRY HOMAGE TO TINA TURNER AND ARETHA FRANKLIN, NOW STREAMING ONLINE
“A tapestry of brooding beauty.” – KCRW
“Infused with hooks and conjuring images of wide-open spaces, they challenge our basic notions about pop music while giving us hope for the form’s future.” – PopMatters
Communicating Vessels and multi-city outfit Rose of the West are excited to announce the Friday, September 8 release of No Things Permanent, an album whose blend of haunting dream-pop, goth rock, shoegaze, trip-hop, and progressive pop is informed by singer/frontwoman, lyricist, and guitarist Gina Marie Barrington's musical upbringing. A patient and meticulous lyrical landscaper, Barrington is one who knows the fullest, brightest blooms can carry a burden as heavy as any sorrow. An album that features the creative dynamics of the group alongside the sonic contributions of co-producer Brad Timko, GRAMMY Award-winning mixer Darrell Thorp (Radiohead, Beck, Foo Fighters), and mastering engineer Heba Kadry (Bjork, Beach House, Slowdive), No Things Permanent is a deceptively upbeat yet brooding exploration of the human condition.
Leading the collection is the sultry "Come and Find Me," a song written in L.A. at a time of simultaneous social unrest and social distancing. Paying homage to Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner while issuing the speaker’s in-world adversary a dare and a demand, the song is a tribute in a time of helplessness and heartache. It's also a call to be seen and have one’s pain understood by the person who caused it – which is all too often, of course, impossible.
Following the album’s sultry lead single, “Come and Find Me,” “Feast or Famine” is a statement years in the making. Part hymnal, part lament, and part willing surrender, the song is a labor of love for Barrington that underwent a transformation with the addition of a bridge – a kind of meta commentary on breaking up the cyclical nature of a doomed dynamic.
Like the Australian Eucalyptus macrocarpa from whence the band takes its name, Rose of the West is a rare and stunning culmination of setting, evolution, and adaptation rooted in an ability to survive — even thrive — in environments that would devastate the less formidable and self-reliant.
Presently composed of singer/frontwoman, lyricist, and guitarist Gina Marie Barrington, synthesist and guitarist Thomas Gilbert, and drummer Dave Power, the group owes its unique sound to a combination of Barrington’s poetry and focus, Gilbert’s ear and architecture, Power’s prolificacy and range, and the musical prowess and production experience of recently departed bassist, Cedric LeMoyne (Remy Zero, Alanis Morissette).
That sound — a blend of dark dream pop, gothic rock, shoegaze, trip hop, and progressive pop that defies strict categorization — is both informed by, and a kind of rebellion against, Barrington’s musical instruction. As the granddaughter of an orchestra director, the artist often found herself immured in piano, flute, and violin lessons governed by dogmatic fundamentals that left little room for experimentation and self-expression. It was a pedagogy against which Barrington railed, and one that inspired her affinity for artists similarly disinclined to play by the rules. Whether that rejection of the handbook manifested in genre-blending, daring lyrical statements, or an unorthodox approach to form and function, it was the emotional impact of the risk — rather than any one particular mode, movement, or mood — to which Barrington was most drawn. That the singer is at once a child of the ‘90s and a true musical polyhistor is evident in Rose of the West’s own distinct and diverse narrative: in it, listeners are as likely to find elements ranging from industrial to ska and punk, to r&b and post-grunge as they are traces of Kate Bush, The Cure, and The English Beat.
Rose of the West found its current form amidst the isolation and tumult of 2020. But despite its recent metamorphosis, the band’s exquisite balance of pathos, place, and perspective is also the consequence of a lifetime’s worth of meaning-making and introspection, kismet and artistic perseverance. In 2018, the band landed a track on Season One of Netflix’s You, before releasing a self-titled debut in 2019 whose hypnotic, cinematic surrealism garnered widespread praise. A number of years in, the band’s infrastructure may have changed, but their sound — composed by Barrington and transformed and amplified by the group into, as Evan Rytlewski wrote in 2019, “music as voluptuous and immersive as Barrington’s voice” — remains as haunting and distinctive as ever.