The shoegazey, slowcore-ish, folk-adjacent Philadelphia indie rockers Knifeplay have spent the two and a half years since their spectacular sophomore album Animal Drowning slowly trickling out new music without giving us a proper follow-up just yet. There have been new Christmas songs that always disappear from Bandcamp once the holiday season is over, a reissue of debut album Pearlty, and a new song called "Spirit Echo" paired with an Elvis Depressedly cover. Today they've found another way to share new tunes without releasing a new LP, and I'm not about to complain because those new tunes are amazing.
Live In Seattle features five songs from the band's performance opening for Ride at the Showbox in Seattle last May. Ride secretly recorded Knifeplay's set from the soundboard that night and offered the tracks to the band, whose Johanna Baumann mixed the resulting recordings into the new EP out today. Two Animal Drowning selections are on there, but the other three tracks — "Agonizing Mountain," "Lord, Where are you?" and "Love Song" — are unreleased songs from Knifeplay's upcoming LP3. All the new songs are long, sprawling past the eight, nine, and 10-minute mark, respectively. All of them make epic use of that runtime, too, wringing slow-burn beauty and startling power from every aching twist and turn. It's a bit like Red House Painters with the country dial and the dream-pop dial both turned up, or Low turning Americana into glacial post-rock, or Greet Death blurred into gorgeous soft focus. It's spectacular. Listen to it:
Live In Seattle is out now. Buy it on cassette here.
