Writing of the record Way Haul Away back in 2020, we described how Shane Parish utilised self-discovery and improvisation to constantly hone his craft. His work had moved beyond the experimental rock of former band Ahleuchatistas into a searching style of folk music which looked for inspiration and meaning across both time and space. With Neapolitan boat songs, Mexican love ballads, and dusty cowboy hymns, the album “felt like an arrival,” as we put it. “The logical end-point after years of exploration.”
Though it certainly was an arrival, Way Haul Away was anything but an endpoint. More like the first step into a wide territory Parish can now explore at his leisure. Guided by constant study and teaching, he has continued this journey into traditional folk music, with latest album Liverpool turning its attention to sea shanties. Out next month on Dear Life Records, the release reimagines these work songs and lovelorn ballads as guitar arrangements, harnessing the power of the songs’ vocal elements and the rhythms coded within their melodies. “These old melodies are timeless due to their physiological power to vibrate the human nervous system in just the right way,” Parish explains. “They are the code to resonance within the body, and thus a fantastic and magical part of our evolution.”
Liverpool was originally envisioned as a solo acoustic guitar record, with Parish devoting much time to the complex arrangements, though eventually he found himself leaning into his days with Ahleuchatistas and redesigning the songs around the electric guitar. The result is a deeper engagement with the physiological power described above, the electrical flow of the new arrangements tapping into the melodies’ autonomic immediacy.
Latest single ‘Haul Away Joe’ shows this in action – the traditional shanty simultaneously celebrated and subverted. It’s a track taut and humming with energy, Parish’s careful restraint slowly relinquishing its grip as the momentum builds, paying off in a sound both haunting and dynamic.
The mood is captured in a video directed by Courtney Chappell and Parish himself. “My plan was to film this video in South Florida, where I grew up, over the xmas holidays, but Omicron made us change our plans and we stayed in Athens. My wife Courtney is a phenomenal dancer and I just love the way her spirit animates her body through dance. She is featured among the industrial imagery we filmed near my daughter’s dance school in Athens.”
Liverpool is out on the 4th March via Dear Life Records and you can pre-order it from the Shane Parish Bandcamp page.
