Unnatured by Slow Spirit

released September 23, 2017

Unnatured is Slow Spirit's first complete feeling album. It follows a string of DIY releases spanning 4 years, elaborating on the themes put forth on those recordings through a streak of isolation and self-discovery amidst the on-going dissolution of tangible social networks. Nothing is what it once seemed. Relationships are elusive, words are inert, and understanding is fleeting. Skepticism, defeatism, and optimism all feed into the music of Slow Spirit, a polarized sound that embodies their collective experience, disorienting and emboldening at once.

The stories on the album are told under layers of abstraction. Delicately assembled characters are crystallized in place and time. These environmentally rich portraits often draw attention to the negative space surrounding the point. Natalie’s lyrics address themes of self-made restitution (“Human”), the sweet, ephemeral road relationships of traveling people (“Good Bird”), and the curious incidence of intimacy at great distances (“Unknown”, “Oh My Old Friend”).

Slow Spirit is Eric Roberts, Natalie Bohrn, Julian Beutel, Brady Allard, and Justin Alcock. Slow Spirit met in Brandon, Manitoba, after making the same idealistic decision to leave their hometowns to study music. This is where Slow Spirit learned their language -- through tinkering with concepts like colour, texture, hierarchy, figure and ground. These ideas remain vital to their democratic process of building songs, in which lyrics are built up and around with broad strokes of freedom and design.