Pale Houses have released a new single entitled “The Ocean Bed,” from their upcoming EP Songs of the Isolation, out on March 30th. Listen to the track now below.
The two founding members of Nashville’s Pale Houses have long been fixtures in the city’s indie rock landscape. Singer/guitarist Aaron Robinson and drummer Ryan Rayborn’s college-era band Imaginary Baseball League burst onto the scene back in the early aughts, filling clubs and being selected to open for various influential tours. Infighting and clichés halted what to many seemed like inevitable success. In 2012, Rayborn and Robinson began casually working on songs via email. Thinking they might actually have something, the pair recruited two other Nashville vets in Joshua Hood (guitar) and Aaron Yung (bass). The once bare-bones demos grew much wider in scope and sound, giving way to 2013’s broody, dynamic self-titled EP, produced by Patrick Damphier (Mynabirds, Jessica Lea Mayfield). The band reconvened in early 2017 with engineer/producer Brandon Owens (Mutemath) to record a follow-up. The result is Songs of the Isolation – a unique & dreamy mix of indie & rock sounds, blending the musical auras of The Blue Nile, American Football, Death Cab for Cutie, and The Cure, with a hat-tip to 1980s pop a la Cyndi Lauper.
“I wrote and demoed ‘The Ocean Bed’ as a droning, mellow tune,” explains vocalist Aaron Robinson. “I like to think that the band picked up on the longing and tension in the words and transformed it into the pop anthem that it needed to become.”