Slang – “Wilder” [Video]

Slang’s debut album Cockroach in a Ghost Town hits on May 27, 2022 via Kill Rock Stars. Drew Grow (Lyricist/singer/guitarist) and Janet Weiss (drummer/singer) started the band over a decade ago in Portland, OR—both having spent more than half their lives dedicated to making and performing music. Through the years, Weiss has played with everyone from her bands Quasi, Wild Flag, and Sleater-Kinney, to collaborators like Elliott Smith, Stephen Malkmus, and others; Grow has fronted his own groups Modern Kin and the Pastors’ Wives, producing other bands along the way. Starting as a moonlighting collaboration, the meeting of this particular group was kismet if not totally cosmic.

Following a homespun two-song cassette, the group set out to do its own music, true to each of its members. The band grew to include Kathy Foster (Roseblood, The Thermals) on bass and Anita Lee Elliot (Viva Voce) on guitar/vocals—with record appearances made by Sam Coomes (Quasi), Stephen Malkmus (Pavement), Mary Timony (Helium, Ex Hex, Wild Flag) and others.

With glam tones and chord-changes, attitudes and gusto that characterize both album and stage performance, Cockroach in a Ghost Town centers a place only inasmuch as it situates a band of extraordinary voices together on a stage in a strange and chaotic landscape. It exhibits the topography of an interior world that’s rough, lush, lined with a confluence of creative streams. Weaving opposites and contradictions—toughness and tenderness; intensity and calm; randomness and order; clarity and opacity; a stoic welcoming of love in lieu of romance Slang’s Cockroach in a Ghost Town challenges expectations.

You can pre-order the album HERE.