Release Premiere: Starpainter - Blood In The Snow
Lethbridge act, Starpainter released their fantastic debut album, Bury Me By My Family, in May of 2020. The album featured their classic folk rock influences with alt-country tones. We covered the album as a “Quick Pick” with Jeshaiah David stating:
“Lethbridge, Alberta’s very own Starpainter (formerly The Utilities) put storytelling at the forefront of their laid back style of folk rock. On Bury Me By My Family, the band gels together beautifully to provide an exquisite backdrop for the stories within.”
Today, the Cups N Cakes Network is very pleased to announce that Starpainter’s follow-up will arrive tomorrow (November 19th) in the form of a three song EP entitled, Blood In The Snow.
This new EP tells three versions of the same story, existing in a semi-fictional small-town universe where it’s usually winter, people are usually drinking, and things are usually not going very well. Having been self recorded and mixed with engineering by Starpainter’s guitar player, Joel Gray, it marks the bands first foray into a total DIY approach.
We caught up with principal songwriter Joel Stretch to elaborate:
"This is our first ever all-homemade recording. We played, recorded, and mixed everything ourselves. We tried it as an experiment with a few rented microphones in my living room. The results were much much better and more exciting than we anticipated. We all kind of fell in love with the process and with the way this recording sounds.”
When we asked him why they decided to attempt recording on their own, Stretch continued:
”A documentary by Agnès Varda called “The Beaches of Agnès” provided a push of motivation to attempt self-recording this EP. “The Beaches of Agnès” explores Varda’s life as a visionary who continued making things through all seasons of her life, often against the odds. She created outstanding movies with whatever spaces and resources were available to her, often without funding and while balancing family responsibilities. After watching the doc and watching a whole bunch of her beautiful movies I felt a strong conviction: I want to make things with my friends with whatever tools I currently have available to me. Don’t wait until everything aligns, don’t wait for the perfect moment--start now and keep going for as long as it feels like a source of life and light."
We are very excited to deliver an exclusive premiere of the entire EP one day before it is released. Have a listen below and check back in on their Bandcamp page tomorrow to support them with a purchase of Blood In The Snow.