Western Haunts

With lazy melodies, lush guitars and thundering toms, Western Haunts' Alt-Country sound is a call to Midwestern revival, drenched in reverb and the ambience of shoe-gaze music. Western Haunts’ music and lyricist Jake Witt’s songs about lost summers in the rural Rust Belt and ghost stories from his Midwestern roots recently caught the attention of music attorney Gillian Bar (Arcade Fire, The National, The Decemberists) and tastemaker John Richards (KEXP 90.3FM).

Western Haunts music can be heard across the nation on CMJ radio stations and programming on MTV and FUEL TV. Live, Western Haunts have been playing bills with artists the likes of Jessica Lea Mayfield (Nonesuch Records) Moondoggies (Hardly Art) Sallie Ford and The Sound Outside and Motopony, as well as in-studio performances on KEXP and currated shows by Seattle's City Arts Magazine, Seattle Weekly and Seattle's premiere music festival The Capitol Hill Block Party.

Fueled by uprising and in the spirit of the folk revival music tradition, Western Haunts’ moody, psych-tinged fourth release, The Ambassador E.P., follows in the footsteps of its predecessor’s expansive, anthemic song craft, the Utøya E.P.(2011). Recorded and produced by the band in a collection of storage units along a dilapidated stretch of Seattle highway, The Ambassador E.P. (OUT NOW) is a collection of songs penned for the disenfranchised and a sonic wash of populist zeal.

Western Haunts’ musical progression from reverb drenched, Americana into a driving, psychedelic rock outfit continues to evolve on The Ambassador E.P. The band’s knack for layering lush organ and vocal soundscapes with pulsing, percussive, rhythms and spiraling guitar lines, blanket the listener in sound on the new release. Ominous lyrical themes weave a cautionary tale of living in a rich eats poor world of talking heads, crooks, cronies and inequity. On the eve of Woody Guthrie’s 100th birthday and the twilight of a turbulent period of global unrest, Western Haunt’s latest work poses the question of what do we do the morning after.

Western Haunts released their 2nd full length album Shed Your Summer Shell in the fall of 2010, receiving critical praise and national CMJ radio airplay. The following summer stirred by the tragic events that took place in Norway and Japan, Western Haunts returned to the studio to record new material and release the Utøya E.P. in honor and celebration of their friends and family whose homes were impacted by tragedy.

Influences:
CSNY, Neil Young, Beach Boys, Built To Spill, Fleetwood Mac, My Bloody Valentine, Spiritulalized, The Zombies, Pink Floyd, Electric Bob Dylan, Cocteau Twins, Swervedriver