Redwood: Post-Rock Goes Pop

As a civilisation, we’re sailing the seven seas of life through the stormiest of weathers in unprecedented times right now. Often, storms are thought to bring about the darker depths of life, but can also be an opportunity for rebirth and for growth. Much like the ocean we sail, storms are a chance to make a change. Whilst it might seem ironic to idealise change when our world is constantly changing, it’s something Hertfordshire’s REDWOOD wear like hearts on their sleeves as they circumnavigate a course of changes within their lives, both as human beings and band members.

Since their formation in their late-teens, REDWOOD – comprised of vocalist and guitarist Alex Birchall, guitarists Jamie Richards and Edan Brown, bassist Conor Bond and drummer Toby Fassioms – have been undergoing change in every way. Having traversed the trials and tribulations of life living away from home at university to putting out a string of genre-bending EPs, change has coloured and characterised the band on their way to releasing their debut album, Beside A Shallow Sun.

Reflections of their reality are simply consequences of their time reflecting as a whole. For REDWOOD, Beside A Shallow Sun was their way of synthesising their own experiences into their songs so that their fans could share their own experiences. They realised early on that what they were writing about was universal, explains Edan. “A lot of them are about the big changes in your life, you know, like going from being a student where life feels a bit more easy and then suddenly your in the big wide world and reality hits, and trying to be in a band whilst that’s all happening is very difficult. I think if you enjoyed your time at uni, and you meet a lot of people, suddenly moving cities and losing contact with all of these people and everything you’re used to, it is a massive change, and I don’t think anyone recognises that sometimes, so for us it was kind of a hotbed for us to write songs about.”

Whilst they were knee deep in their newfound hotbed of songwriting, they found themselves outside of their comfort zones – something which has suddenly become a bit of a theme for REDWOOD. They’ve found comfort in their sound, and in the solace setting off from their comfort zones has bought them. In this, they lend Beside A Shallow Sun a dash of maturity, painting the album in retrospective shades that seeps through both lyrically and musically.

“I think we’ve all been put out of our comfort zones a bit in the last few years, so we kind of deal with stress a lot easier and we’re a lot more organised than we used to be, I think in the past we’ve left things to the last minute or kind of take things as they come, whereas now we’ve very prepared and we take more of a proactive approach,” explains Ewan enthusiastically. “I think when that comes to songwriting, and rehearsing, having that energy where you’re constantly trying to improve things and not letting things get you down is so important. In the past if we got stuck on something we’d get hung up on it whereas now we look past it, or move onto another thing and come back to it.”

Beside A Shallow Sun sounds more like a labour of love than just an album. It’s a curated collection of two years worth of experiences, shaken up in a pick-and-mix cocktail of post-rock, math-rock, emo and indie-pop. Whilst their math-rock and post-rock pasts haunt the album, their writing has taken more pop-centric strides, bringing big-room sing-along choruses to the fore. However, this shift in their approach isn’t to avoid being pigeon-holed or to fit onto a Spotify playlist, it’s simply to grow themselves as sophisticated pop-sensible songwriters.

“I think it’s easy for that to become a big deciding factor when you’re writing music, like when you’re trying to market yourself it is difficult to stray from the dumb practises of trying to get on Spotify playlists, it is horrible, and obviously we don’t want to be writing stuff that panders to that.” deadpans Ewan. “We all love pop music, and we do really enjoy writing more pop-centred structured songs and it is really fun trying to fit the influences we enjoy – the hardcore influences and the post-rock influences – even if they’re very subtle, we try to fit them in to our music in as many ways possible into a poppier structure. Not for the idea of it being easy for people to listen to, I don’t think that’s the case at all, I think we’re just trying to work on being the best songwriters we can be.”

Beside A Shallow Sun is the work of a band at the peak of their creative powers. Without the backing of a label, REDWOOD are unbounded by the traditional barriers of creative freedom that bands have red-taped across their recordings. Whilst Ewan isn’t against their experiences with record labels, he’s certainly aware of the benefits they’ve reaped from risking it on their own, explaining. “In the past when we’ve been with a label they’ve always been great, and we’ve never felt like our creative process has been decided by them or that there’s been any influence from them, but certainly for us, without that, we’ve realised now what we want to sound like.”

With Beside A Shallow Sun under their belts, REDWOOD have successfully circumnavigated through their course of change, no matter how stormy the weather or how tenacious the wave. This is a characteristic that like an undercurrent runs through the very veins of REDWOOD and in a time of uncertainty such as we’re undergoing now, this is something we could all learn a little from.

Beside A Shallow Sun is out now via self-release. 

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