“Strays Forever” by Scarves

Scarves photo credit: Brittne Lunniss

There’s a moment early in “Strays Forever” where the song just kind of cracks open, and it’s hard not to feel it. It’s the title track off Scarves’ next record, produced by Chris Walla, and it lands on a question that’s been sitting underneath the whole album: how do you still have faith after a decade of false starts?

The record started as something else entirely — a musical, actually — before it settled into the loose concept album it is now, following a couple stumbling through grief and anxiety and the strange hope of trying to build a future worth having a kid in. Of all the songs on Strays Forever, this one gets closest to what the record’s actually about.

It’s also the first time the band’s worked with Walla, and you can hear them feeding off each other. They recorded at Hall of Justice in Seattle and just let themselves get weird with it — Speak & Spell toys through arpeggiators, takes with no click track, flute, strings, tape that got messed with on purpose (and probably some that wasn’t on purpose). Frontman Niko Stathakopoulos describes it as Walla’s “Willy Wonka” approach — the guy just wants to see what happens.

That tracks with how Niko talks about himself, too. He’s spent years chasing new ways to perform — lately it’s been clowning and improv — and he says the whole point is learning to get out of your own head and actually be in the room with people. You can feel that all over this record: ideas that have no business working, working anyway.

Scarves have been doing this since 2013, cutting their teeth in Seattle’s all-ages scene at spots like the Firehouse in Redmond — the same scrappy circuit that helped put Death Cab and Modest Mouse on the map. Their last album, Delicate Creatures, got them out on the road opening for PUP, Deerhoof, and The Dodos.

Scarves

Strays Forever

Tender Loving Empire

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