Leland Sundries
The great Leland Sundries; photographed by Nixxi Blanck.
Meet Leland Sundries, as they premiere their bus trip from hell & back again with “Grehyound From Reno”. The Brooklyn bunch of Nick Loss-Eaton, Matthew Sklar, Ivan DeYoung-Dominguez, Gregg Tallent, & Curtis Brewer deliver a rocking listen from their album Music For Outcasts available now. The band together brings about the feeling of being stuck on the longest, and weirdest Greyhound rides to parts unknown where creatures unknown and more await and lurk.
Leland Sundries invites you to the buy the ticket & take the ride on a midnight bus called “Greyhound From Reno”. The song’s rhythm chords conjure up everything from the coach motor to the glittering lights of gambled dreams, slot-machines, blackjack & poker tables all left behind for a whole other kind of hollow journey home. Confusion and weirdness anchors everything else apart from the song’s steadfast rhythm section (special shout out to Olivia Mancini for supplying bass contributions while battling a vicious winter flu), as the awkward and uncomfortable fable of amphetamine addled travel makes everything feel like it’s part of some sort of scream queen dream. Weird pubs, fire houses on fire, car washes, wrong addresses, and art damaged angels all play out on the stage that the Leland Sundries gang sets up in superb style.
We had a chance to get a few insights from Nick Loss-Eaton on the brand new single from Leland Sundries:
Much of “Greyhound From Reno” was written at the end of my alcoholism and the isolation, fear, chaos, and shame are thick. It’s impressionistic, non-linear, but that sense that you can’t outrun yourself is palpable. I fashioned a chorus rather than a bridge and took it into the studio. The ending rose with a predictable, omnipresent anxiety. This was a song that felt unfinished for the longest time. I had a version of it that I demo’d in east London that will appear as a bonus digital download on the LP. It felt like a very anxious fragment. It felt like an early Mountain Goats song to me. I thought this might be a stripped down, lo-fi song but once producer Quinn McCarthy got a hold of it, he added some layers and it began to feel like something out of an angsty 90s album.
Kicking back with Leland Sundries; photographed by Nixxi Blanck.
The synth part is all him and it adds a level of sweetness and palatability to an otherwise panic-stricken song. On the vocals, we must’ve done over 20 takes. We talked about this character and the PCPs he might’ve taken before he got on the bus. We turned out all the lights in the studio and it got weird. I sang and screamed until I got really hoarse and it felt like an exorcism of panic. Olivia Mancini, who fronts her own band, played a wicked bass line on this one. During the week of recording, she had a rough flu and was wrapped in a blanket in a semi-heated studio in the wintertime. The rest of us were continuously bringing her tea. She was a trooper for doing the sessions sick as a dog.
Leland Sundries’ upcoming album Music For Outcasts is available now via Pledge Music.
