IDAHO
NEW ALBUM, DECEMBER 6
about the band
King Ropes’ 6th full length album, Idaho, is soaked in "The Spirit of The West". Whatever that means. It’s not The West of tourism pamphlets, fly fishing, or cowboys riding into the sunset. Riffing on the idea of Idaho as a kind of misunderstood underdog, the band is more interested in evoking a world both remarkably gorgeous and harshly unforgiving. The band is carving out a sound for itself that reflects modern life in The American West — evoking the bewildering complexity and contradictions, the massive expanses, mythology and realities, mind blowing beauty and heartbreaking hardships. Boom and Bust. The Mountain West. The American West. So, it’s fitting that King Ropes’ music is full of open spaces and jagged edges. Guitars scrape and whine. Amps rumble. Rickety pianos rattle in and out of tune. Like the West, nothing is too refined. At the center of it all is Dave Hollier, a gifted songwriter at the top of his game; with his odd quivering voice, surveying a land that’s a solar system unto itself, an impossible collection of distances and dreams.
Guitars, Vocals, Noise, Songwriting / Dave Hollier
Bass, Guitars, Syths, Piano, Sorcery / Ben Roth
Drums, Percussion, Vibe / Jeff Jensen
Cello / Sam Hollier (not pictured)
live
what they're saying
“Lo-fi Americana/psych outfit King Ropes evoke the striking and expansive landscapes of their native Montana, offering up a homebrew of caustic folk yarns and chunky garage rockers. The band deftly balances thrilling guitar riffs with more nuanced arrangements that crawl under your skin and take up permanent residence. Feedback roars with an unexpected ferocity across these tracks, jolting tempos into the upper atmospheres.
With their new single, “Halfway Did”, the band lopes through a selection of roughhewn rock territories, with Hollier’s compelling voice channeling the odd angles of Lou Reed and Bob Mould. The guitars are prickly and aggrieved as the drums batter away at your senses.”
“[Magical Floating Eye] is certainly an intriguing door into [King Ropes’] softly weird world… There’s a little of Kurt Wagner’s husky, declamatory warmth and observation to their thang; a touch of the Malkmus absurds, a little Mr E, too; all wrapped up in a surreal flow and groovily slacker guitars and mellotron that seeps into your brain, epiphany and extrapolated imagery, free-associating lyrical flow: “A magical floating eye on a blue plate hanging on a wall in a motel in Deer Lodge, Montana / Might make you free...”
“Occupying the same melodic space as Purple Mountains or Lambchop, [‘Girls Like Us’] sways with an inherent grace and echoes through the deep chambers of your heart. ”
“ [The] stellar but vastly under-appreciated rock outfit King Ropes’ new album, Gravity and Friction, [offers] a goldmine of tracks that persevere to the true essence of what a meaningful indie band should and always be— eclectic, un-cliche, mood swinging, shades of psychedelic and yes— sad in all the best ways.”
