Kat Harlton
Lead Photo: Mike Pepperdine
Current Swell recently released their latest collection, Buffalo in October. The five-piece roots rock outfit from Victoria, B.C. made the new album with acclaimed producer Colin Stewart (The New Pornographers, Yukon Blonde, Dan Mangan), taking a “no rush” approach, something that Scott Stanton (lead vocals/guitars) says was important when choosing latest single Bring It On Home, “We always in the past, thought of it as having to put out the banger single. We don’t have a record label anymore, so now we get to make our own rules and it was refreshing. We just really liked this song, we knew it wasn’t going to go to radio, and that’s fine. Usually when you put out a single, you focus on getting it to radio and I don’t think it was as big of a concern this time. We didn’t have a label telling us what to do, so it was just nice that we go to do what we wanted to do.”
As for album direction, the band got to record in their home of Victora, B.C giving them more freedom to allow the record to develop naturally, “We actually recorded this album over the course of a year. We recorded three really mellow songs, and we kind of took a step back and got out of the studio, and were like ‘what other songs do we like?’, so we went in and recorded these other ones that have a little bit more volume to them. We kind of got to see the album take shape, instead of just writing thirty songs and picking ten, and recording them without seeing how they actually would turn out. It was nice to let it form as we went.”
The band has a proven track record of sold-out tours in North America, Brazil, and Europe, and over 50 million streams worldwide. Current Swell has opened for the likes of The Tragically Hip, Edward Sharpe, Xavier Rudd, Dispatch, Sam Roberts Band and The Cat Empire. When asked about his musical influences, Scott shares it was his dad’s record collection that had a lasting impact, “Neil Young is my die hard, I definitely grew up listening to all my dad’s records. Bob Marley, and all that classic stuff. I listened to punk when I was real young, like grade six and seven days. I went through a rap phase for sure, still love rap and hip hop.” For those wondering, Scott is the proud owner of a large portion of his dad’s record collection, “I made a rule when I got home, that I would just spread them all over my floor in front of the record player, and they would not go on the shelf until I listened to them. Every one of those records have been listened to.”
In January 2020 the band embark on a 20 date European tour, date and ticket information can be found here.
For more on Current Swell visit: https://currentswell.com