Lost Leaders: Volunteer

One of my favorite authors right now is Myke Cole — he wrote books like Control Point and The Armored Saint / The Queen of Crows — who I highly recommend, if you haven’t read anything by him. Every now and again, he plugs the work of his brother, Peter Cole, one half of a band called Lost Leaders.

I was doing a bit of traveling earlier this week, and needed a new band to listen to, and picked up the group’s 2017 EP Heavy Lifting. It’s a really great little album, with six excellent tracks that I ended up listening to over and over again over the course of this week.

The EP kicks off with the radio-friendly ‘Volunteer’, heads into a more lyrical (and vaguely-José González sounding?) ‘Gienevieve’, and a relaxed ‘A Million Little People’ that has a great chorus. ‘I Feel It Coming On’, ‘April Snow’, and ‘The Righteous Path’ round out the record, and what strikes me is that the duo doesn’t really settle into one sound — they go from indie/alt-rock sound to relaxing ballad, and does it really well. I really like harmonies, and these guys hit a really good balance with that and their guitar work.

The group just wrapped up a crowdfunding project on PledgeMusic called Promises, Promises, which is over its goal and should come out sometime in February 2019. It sounds like it’ll hav a similar vibe and sound as Heavy Lifting, and I’ve already backed it. If the music on the video is any indication, it’s going to be a good one. Next up on my list is to check out their self-titled debut, which came out in 2014.