In a special edition of Origins, Slothrust’s Leah Wellbaum reveals the inspirations behind the project’s new album, Parallel Timeline. Plus, the band shares an advanced stream of the effort ahead of its official release.
Slothrust’s new album, Parallel Timeline, isn’t officially out until Friday, but the Los Angeles indie outfit are sharing it a day early. Stream the band’s fifth full-length record in full below via the accompanying YouTube visualizer playlist.
Officially out September 10th via Dangerbird Records, Parallel Timeline finds Slothrust amplifying their sound with new, experimental production and performing techniques. Leaning heavily into audacious improvisation, the sonic landscapes became the perfect canvas on which bandleader Leah Wellbaum could paint with the brush of her inner child, “a voice that allows ideas to flow freely and without censorship.”
The resulting 10 tracks are some of the strongest of Slothrust’s career, filled with poetic honesty and precise, captivating guitar work. Early singles showed off the album’s moments of bluesy garage rock (“Cranium”), haunting (“Strange Astrology”) and catchy (“Once More for the Ocean”) indie, and melodic grunge (the Lzzy Hale-featuring “The Next Curse”). Co-produced by Billy Bush with mastering from Heba Kadry, Parallel Timeline can now be experienced in all its glory below.
Under the stream, Wellbaum gives Consequence an exclusive breakdown of the album for our Origins series. As she explains, much of the LP is about realizing that what we see is not necessarily the way things are, both for ourselves and the world around us.
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“There is an optical illusion that occurs if you stare at our album art and then look at a white space and blink,” she explains. “Your brain inverts the colors of the inverted rainbow we present on our cover and what you see is a traditional rainbow. For me this is a symbol of the way we can become so bound to our reality that we forget life is full of illusory experiences and there is always more to be seen.”
Pre-orders for Slothrust’s Parallel Timeline are available here. You can also catch the band on tour later this fall with Manchester Orchestra and Foxing, with tickets on sale at Ticketmaster or on the secondary market.
