Best of 2015: Slow Down Molasses break through

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It’s not always easy being a musician in the prairies. With so much space between one town and the next, label representation and support are a rare commodity. The result is a lot of D.I.Y., countless hours on the road and often only minimal success.

But when you do finally get some traction on the national musical landscape, it feels really fucking good. It’s something Saskatoon’s Slow Down Molasses can attest to after the successful May 2015 release of Burnt Black Cars on Culvert Music.

“It was a lot about setting a vision. I wrote some songs, Chris [Morin] wrote some songs — so there’s still a lot collaboration on this album,” says frontperson Tyson McShane. “But it was still guided by a set vision.”

The new album features a more confident and mature sound than what the band has produced in the past.  This maturity can easily be attributed to the band’s ten year history of producing LPs and EPs along with touring both Canada and Europe multiple times, often pulled together by the band themselves.

“With this record we took our time to find a label for it. It’s such a rare thing for a Saskatoon band to actually have a label that will support them. You really have to commit to being on tour a lot and we’ve been lucky to be in the position to do a fair bit of touring.”

In fact, the band has been to Europe four times already and have established a strong fan base.

And while the album’s success is a positive for 2015, McShane and Scholz agree that the highlight of the year was opening for England alt-rockers Swervedriver in Edmonton. They even got the seal of approval from their frontperson Adam Franklin.  

“[He] actually sat down and listened to us and told us we were pretty good and It was like ‘oh, ok. Dad approves’.”

Read Caulfield’s review of Burnt Black Cars along with the rest of the best albums from across Canada in our Best of 2015 issue below.