Dying Stars is an collection of 8 songs, the full length debut from Seattle’s 5 piece Evening Bell, preceded by single releases “Dust Storm” and “Restlesss Angel”. Evening Bell is headed up by the songwriting duo and real life couple Caitlin Sherman (Slow Skate) and Hart Kingsbery (Davidson Hart Kingsbery) and backed by drummer Jason Merculief (J. Tillman, Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter), John Hyde on pedal steel guitar, and Aaron Harmonson on bass. The two songwriters harmonize soulfully in the album’s catchy opening track, “This Barroom Ain’t Your Church”, a song that might be playing for the noonday whiskey swillers plugging coins into jukeboxes at dark roadside dives. Sherman’s lilting and sometimes pleasantly creepy piano coupled with the languid graveled swing of Kingsbery’s vocals shine on “Prairie Calls.” Another emotive track, Western Theme, rolls with reverb guitar and expansive borderland violins, summoning a Tarantinoesque landscape of rattlesnakes and dusty corral showdowns. Dying Stars echoes with tender barroom honkey tonk and psychedelic tinged urban grit; the mood is unhurried, haunting, and cinematic. A compelling nod to the one time outpost that was the old Pacific Northwest, and its movement into contemporary realms of psychedelia and rock ‘n’ roll. – Written by SLynch
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