Escaping Pavement - New Album (The Night Owl) + New Single ("Fuel The Fire")

Escaping Pavement's album, The Night Owl is now available for pre-order on iTunes. Any pre-orders instantly grants a download of 'Fuel the Fire," which we're premiering below....

Escaping Pavement make sparseness stunning. The acoustic guitar and mandolin crackle together like a mesmerizing bonfire, and the voices of Emily Burns and Aaron Markovitz blend together like the azure purple and tawny oranges of vibrant sunset…

Their arrangements never need to be any overly showy folk-rock fling; the pureness of the scant instruments at play, the stringed hollow wood and the two human voices, have enough heart in their harmony to carry each song.

The Ferndale based duo thrive on this close, introspective folk sound, but somehow augment an otherwise intimate occasion and make it tacitly tremendous. Maybe you’re hiking and you come to a clearing and a doe patters right into your path and startles you and the wilderness around you freezes for unmeasurable moments? You know… That’s what Escaping Pavement can do with a song; not to retro-anthropomorphize them into a woodland creature, or anything; but that is part of the idea behind their enchantments… escaping the crowds, clamor and commotion of the city and reconnecting with something organic, getting dirt back under your fingernails and relying exclusively on the bare instrumental necessities for your desired wow-factor.    

Now, that’s not to say these two can’t get fired up. “Fuel The Fire” features a kinetic percussive pick upon the mandolin and baritone guitar, fretting along at a furious rate to the point where you could almost run to it…The vocal refrain has just the right amount of twang upon it to give it that Americana charm; but it’s also one of the most demonstrative moments for their complimenting harmonies. They can also bring in a showstopping cover, as with “Girl From The North Country,” dressing in a bit more tinny frills from the banjo and mandolin, while also putting a syrup-thick surge into the vocal intonation.

But here we go... The premier of "Fuel The Fire," from Escaping Pavement's forthcoming album. 

Their new album, TheNight Owl, which comes out June 4^th, opens with what could potentially be Escaping Pavement’s theme song, with “Wanderers.” The guitars flourish in with steady pulses and the purring voices hover like a haze in the opening, but it the soundscape starts to take on a fullness, the voices acquire a radiance and the synced strums start to kick along in the chorus, enough to spur you up out of your chair “We ride with the wind on our own….” Get out of the city. Escape pavement…. Let the twangs’ resonating echo fill the quiet spaces in between and find peace between the finer pieces.