OLD NORTH: 'TIMELESS QUALITY'

Here's what National Public Radio says about "Old North," the latest album by The Slant:

"One of the more difficult things to do in songwriting is crafting concise yet fully formed songs. It's a natural tendency to overwrite, fitting in every idea or phrase that comes to mind. It's much harder to say a lot in not much space. The Slant does just that with Old North, an 18-track album on which most songs clock in around two or three minutes.

"The record flows nicely between rollicking altcountry rock and more personal and intimate songs. While not a concept album, the songs all seem to share a timeless quality: Referencing a rural life filled with old trees by rivers, harvest moons, circus big tops, and even Civil War imagery, the songs seem to inhabit an America long since gone.

Much of the album is rooted in typical folk and indie rock, colored with satisfying peaks of distortion and noise that hint at something a bit darker.

"The incidental background noise of the room - from fluttering book pages and the hammering of nails into wood to humming television static - bleeds into the instruments, giving the record a roomy, do-it-yourself spaciousness. The result is a collection of songs that feel tactile and spontaneous, as if the listener is there in the band's living room listening in on its creation."