[Cover photo credit to Phil Sharp]
Four-piece Bay Area purveyors of Heavy Music, Oxbow, have announced their first new music in six years with the upcoming release of Love’s Holiday on July 21, 2023 from Ipecac Recordings. The album is preceded by the lead single “1000 Hours”, a song featuring Roger Joseph Manning Jr. (Jellyfish/Beck), and a video directed by John David Levy. Love’s Holiday will arrive on limited-edition indie exclusive red and Ipecac marbled grey vinyl variants, as well as standard vinyl, CD and digital.
About the track, vocalist and lyricist Eugene Robinson comments:
’1000 Hours’ for the OXBOW completist, 100 percent ties into our other song “1000,” thematically in my mind. But filming the video, given that I just had surgery a few days before, felt very much like Mann’s ‘Death in Venice’ to me. You know where waiting to die never felt more beautiful, which really feels like the essence of love. Or at least one of them.
Guitarist Niko Wenner adds:
’1000 Hours’ began life with the bright, extroverted feel you hear most, but inevitably the darker introspective mood of the coda and intro emerged. Both qualities are essential to Love’s Holiday. Roger (backing vocals), John (video director) and Joe Chiccarelli (co-producer of Love’s Holiday with Wenner) all did extraordinary work to heighten these emotions.
Love’s Holiday began with the music first for the band, with Wenner citing inspiration from his family, having had two children born and his father pass while working on the record. Love is confirmed as “the organizing principle behind these songs.”
One of the more apparent new approaches on the album is the use of human voices as part of the orchestration. Kristin Hayter (Lingua Ignota) lends her operative vocals to “Lovely Murk,” while the layered choral of “1000 Hours” was provided by Roger Joseph Manning Jr (Jellyfish/Beck). The album also features a 15-person choir plus strings, oboe, flute, and clarinet.
