Based in Chesapeake, Virginia, The Last Bison is a indie pop three-piece consisting of Benjamin Hardesty (vox, guitar), Andrew Benfante (reed organ, keyboards) and Amos Housworth (cello, bass). Since the release of their last EP, Dorado, the outfit have spent a number of years working on a follow-up album to previous full-length, VA, and have undergone something of a transformation in the process as the line-up was whittled down from an original seven members.
The new record, SÜDA, centres on Hardesty’s experiences as a child in Bolivia, where his parents were missionaries. Calling La Paz home, South America taught Hardesty something about the dimensions of the world. There the great Andes rise into diverse forests and other biomes, and traces of vast, ancient civilisations mark the landscape, piercing the bubble of Western life and growing the size and scale of not just the world but humanity’s story upon in. SÜDA is keyed into such an epiphany, taking what The Last Bison know and growing it by several orders of magnitude, resulting in a lush and vivid sound.
We’re sharing another sneak peak of the record in the form of new single, ‘Don’t Look Away’. The track displays the results of the aforementioned transformation, a new-look The Last Bison that moves away from Americana and toward a more immediate synth pop sound. The synths are joined by dynamic percussion and Hardesty’s signature vocals, allowing the band to soar to an extent previously unheard. But despite this new-found panoramic scope, the emotional core of Hardesty’s narrative songwriting remains undiminished, leading to something that’s as heartfelt as it is listenable. As he describes:
Loss is an unfortunate reality. But it happens to us everyday in some capacity. It is usually unexpected and unplanned. However, occasionally we see it coming and can fight to keep what we’re losing. This song came from a time where I wanted nothing more than to hold on to what I thought was slipping away.
SÜDA is out on AntiFragile Music on the 21st September.
Photo by Matthew Simmons