by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
We’re pretty fond of Oakland’s Half Stack around these parts, a band that makes fuzzy alt-country with a lot of radiant personality. There’s a sure fire brand of confidence within each song, as members trade off writing credits and lead vocals, everyone has something to add, and their lush twangy indie pop feels dynamic as a result. It’s been three long years since the band released Wings Of Love, and while some members have ventured away from the Bay Area, there’s a sense of home in Half Stack’s music, a steadfast place of warmth inherent in the writing. The band return with Sitting Pretty, their third full length album, due out October 6th via Forged Artifacts (Greg Mendez, Sonny Falls, Fime) and Royal Oakie Records (Jeff Moller, Go By Ocean, Asha Wells), capturing feelings of isolation and the need to reconnect. With clean guitars, easy progressions, harmonized vocals, and dips into syrupy power-pop bliss, the band continue to evolve in real time as Sitting Pretty plays.
“I Might Try” is the record’s lead single, a song with a subdued three guitar melody, built for structural twang and lending support for Marley Lix Jones’ tremendous lead vocals. Between breathy reflections and sugary hooks, it’s a song that strives to find comfort in the familiar while feeling distanced. The lead guitar line is circular and impossibly catchy, wrapping itself in charm, sliding and slipping in the song’s otherwise unbreakable country shimmer. It feels destined for Summertime, a breezy pop-tinged sing-a-long, exploring the feelings of being lost and unsure, those doubts paired down to live a swooning existence in the highest of temperatures.
Speaking about the song, the band shared:
"During the process of writing and recording this album, the band was spread out across the country. I wrote the guitar parts of this song alone in my apartment during covid and I wrote and recorded the vocals a year later alone in my bedroom in Boston. During all of that isolation and change, we were writing and recording these Half Stack songs. The album became a way of connecting me to my home and to my friends. ‘I Might Try’ is a bit about that and a bit about love. It is a song about moving across the country and feeling unmoored without the people you love. It is about how being with people you care about makes every day a little nicer."