SKINNY DYCK’S NEW EP, MORE EASY, A COLLECTION OF ALTERNATE VERSIONS AND B-SIDES FROM LATEST LP, EASYGOING, OUT TODAY VIA VICTORY POOL RECORDS
WATCH / SHARE “TIRED OUT” + “EASYGOING (MORE EASY)” LIVE PERFORMANCE
BUY / STREAM MORE EASY EP HERE
Photo Credit : Heather Saitz // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Today, Skinny Dyck - the playful performing artistic alias of Western Canadian artist Ryan Dyck, releases More Easy EP. Out via Victory Pool Records, the EP is a collection of alternate versions and B-Sides from his latest album, Easygoing, which was recently nominated for The Western Canadian Music Award’s Recording of the Year.
“The songs on this EP have a common thread of general ‘My Dad’ - that's how I have his contact in my phone - inspirations,” says Dyck. “Prairie landscapes like the Sweetgrass Hills, small towns like Eastend, Sask. Wallace Stegner's ‘Wolf Willow’ has to be one of the best and most poetic accounts of frontier life on the Canadian plains. A time when life was hard and hopes were often few.”
To help celebrate today’s release, Skinny Dyck is sharing the live performance video of EP tracks “Tired Out” and “Easygoing (More Easy)” featuring Austin Parachoniak on guitar. “‘Tired Out’ borrows a few lines from Stegner’s book. You can play this song in the moments of quiet twilight before sunrise and try not to worry about your day.”
WATCH / SHARE “TIRED OUT” + “EASYGOING (MORE EASY)” LIVE PERFORMANCE
MORE ABOUT EASYGOING
Recorded in basements and ad-hoc studio environments by Skinny and his co-producer Aladean Kheroufi, the album's diverse textures are well-balanced by twangy guitars and steel alongside less expected elements like synth hooks and congas. There is a pleasing straightforwardness to the music of Skinny Dyck. His voice is clean and clear (and usually nestled in a bed of lush reverb), the songs are held together with spacious instrumentation and smart, tasty hooks (including Dyck's signature pedal steel work), and the band is right on the money, everything in its right place and not a note wasted. This shouldn't come as a surprise, as Kheroufi (a multi-faceted musician and songwriter in his own right) applied some of the old school, minimalist recording techniques he picked up while interning at Daptone Records years ago, and he has been at the core of Skinny's live band (alongside drummer Clayton Smith) for the last handful of years. So when Dyck and Kheroufi (along with main album drummer Cameron O'Neill) hit the basement to lay down these songs, it was as easy as slipping into a pair of old jeans. And that sprightly, jazz-inflected lead guitar work comes courtesy of Winnipeg's Austin Parachoniak, who helped bring a whiff of Merle Haggard's '80s band to the mix.
Easygoing had its finishing touches applied by the prime candidate for the role, celebrated mix engineer Mark Nevers, whose credit list is a veritable who's who of fresh, forward thinking songwriters and bands that exist in the between-genre sphere. Artists such as Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Silver Jews, Calexico, Andrew Bird, Bill Callahan, and Lambchop have benefited from Nevers' touch, a blend of his trusted ears and vintage analog gear. As a mixer who began working in the traditional Country & Western scenes and slowly gravitated to the more expansive world of indie music, Nevers was a fitting choice for the job.
WATCH / SHARE “GROUND FLOOR” HERE
And this notion of “country but not” courses through Easygoing in a pretty tangible way, its success partially measured by how unnoticeable it is. Take “Nosedive” for example – what might be one of the album's more traditional “boots kickin' up dust” kind of song features a deeply psychedelic spoken word outro, with enigmatic vocals bubbling through a thick web of analog delay; it's truly a unique blend of approaches – and it works. Elsewhere, things continue to pair nicely, with conga drums undercutting sparkling lead guitar and the occasional synth flourish, and “Lean In” features a delicious bass line that sounds as if it was plucked straight from a vintage James Jamerson-played Motown track. The combination of the band's cool chug and Dyck's classic songwriting moves on title track “Easygoing” recall the endless-horizon feel of classic War on Drugs, another band who've managed to successfully infuse the familiar with a jolt of something new.
BUY / STREAM MORE EASY EP HERE
MORE EASY EP TRACKLIST
1 Easygoing (more easy)
2 No Power Over Me
3 Tired Out
4 Part of Me (more easy)
5 Ground Floor
6 One Extra Smile (more easy)