Search - El Capitan :: Stickeen

EL CAPITAN's third album Stickeen was written to a one-inch tape machine at Bart Thurber's House Of Faith studio in Oakland, CA, hand-mixed down to two-track without the aid of automation or a computer. It's an album of roots music in its purest form, full of masterful rhythms, tones, performances, and emotion. The record starts in a blazing California summer with the stomp-grass sing-along 'Happy All The Time,' an ode to the fictional mountain woman named Miss Berryessa whose specialty brew is blackberry moonshine. What follows is a sequence of songs unparalleled in their collective strength. Within, you're as likely to hear a dreamy, dubby lullabye as you are a desperate brew of sonic feedback and heavenly harmonies, where words are less about language and more about how fragments of vocalized sound flow into and out of each other. It's the first, granite truth about Stickeen: These songs, the arrangements, writing, and instrumentation are as solid as they come. Already these kids sound has been likened to artists like LENNON, VAN ZANDT, THE BAND, NIRVANA, CSNY, and even THE EAGLES; but the truth is that EL CAPITAN need not ride on any comparisons at all. Whether simple and literal or straight outta the cosmos whether they make you think about man vs. nature vs. machine or not the hooks in these tunes will keep you up at night and burn themselves into your memory.