Wild Rivers - Wild Rivers - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

California natives Altamont are the brain-child of Dale Crover, drummer of the Melvins. You can tell these guys are in love with the long gone 70s citing everyone from the Kinks to Alice Cooper and Eno to Black Sabbath, with a little Melvins thrown in for good measure.

Indie trio Wild Rivers (Khalid Yassein, Devan Glover, and Andrew Oliver) have a gift for penning introspective lyrics and genre-fluid melodies that transmit wisdom beyond their years. Their anticipated full-length album, Sidelines-co-produced by Peter Katis (The National, Interpol, Sharon van Etten) and Wild Rivers and recorded in Connecticut, Los Angeles and Khalid and Devan's college town of Kingston, Ontario (where the two originally met and began making music together)-touches on coming-of-age themes and embracing the unknown. A portrait of their early post-college years, Sidelines is where Wild Rivers poured their collective impressions about merging into their mid-20s - a strange, liminal age where it's easy to romanticize childhood. Sidelines, according to Andrew, looks back longingly upon Inchthe time when you are truly present and you're not having this forward-thinking vision where you're worried about the next thing. InchInchA lot of [Sidelines] is about perspective and longing to be somewhere that you're not, or trying to figure out how to get to a place that you want to be, whether it's physically, emotionally,Inch says Devan. InchI think we're all kind of struggling with our sense of identity, in the stage of life that we're in. Inch Sonically, Wild Rivers pull from a spectrum of sounds, imbuing pop, rock, indie, and folk into each song's blueprint. InchWe all listen to a wide range of music, from hip-hop to indie rock to pop,Inch Devan says. InchWe like to pull our favorite parts of every genre and patch them together and see what works and see what feels good.

We had a conversation recently where we realized that we've been a band for almost 10 years. When we started Wild Rivers way back when, we had never played a real concert before. When we made our first record it was our first time stepping into a real studio. We barely even knew each other when we started this band. Since then we've played a thousand shows, recorded over 30 songs, and become a family. When we set out to record 'Never Better', we felt like we were at a new stage of the band. By that point, we'd put in the hours and all began to feel totally self assured in what we were about to do. We wanted to bring everything we've learned over the years and all that we've been through as a group to the project. We chose to trust our guts and move quickly and confidently in every decision, second guessing ourselves as little as possible. In having this mindset, we were able to completely let loose and go deeper into the process, finding new ways of recording live, swapping instruments, and turning these songs on their heads. We couldn't have made this record a few years ago. We approached this record with the mindset, 'this is who we are'. We aren't pretending to be something we're not, or trying to sound like anyone else. We wanted it to feel easy. We wanted the stories to be real. We wanted to show our true selves as best we could. We're proud of who we've become as people and as a team. We truly feel like we're having the most fun with music that we've ever had, and in the most exciting stage of our lives. We're never better.