Spark Alaska is the solo project of Lorenzo Cook, a 20-year-old student at Syracuse University. He recently messaged us on Twitter, I followed the links on his page and… hey presto! I discovered Longest Winter. Embarrassingly, a search of our inbox shows that he emailed us way back in February of 2013, an email that was seemingly lost amongst the remixes and jungle club nights. Better late than never, eh? The moral of the story is that if we don’t respond via email (and yoy truly think we will like what you are doing – please no Sexxxy House Grind Remixes), pester us via social media if we don’t reply.
Anyway, Longest Winter, the second full release from Spark Alaska, came out this year. It is self-described as bedroom pop, although its not as lo-fi as you might expect from such a description. His sound draws upon a range of influences: ‘Cleveland is for Leaving’ has a alt-folk/emo-y feel, tracks like ‘Serendipity’ bring to mind Blind Pilot, and songs such as ‘Flowers Along the Highway’ and ‘Portuguese Voices’ have an impassioned roughness that brings to mind Daniel Johnston or Emperor X. The thread that runs through the album is the sad, intelligent lyrics that deal with home and nostalgia in a way that is somewhat akin to Bright Eyes or The Mountain Goats.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/148826569″]
You can get the album on a pay-what-you-can basis via Bandcamp. It was released on tape by Shammy Tapes, but they have now sold out.