Spalted Silverados is a collaboration by Stuart Campbell, Gavin Mathers and Malcolm McMaster. The band recently released a four-song EP entitled Cold.
The EP starts with the title track “Cold.” They mention “Cold is personal experience of vulnerability, growing old and feeling cold, dedicated to a friend who died weeks before its composition.” It revolves around warm acoustic guitar picking and chord progression, reverb laced swells and emotive vocals. It’s a somber song asking philosophical questions and a real sense of a pensive like energy where you get deep in thought. “Carry the Light,” according to the band, is a song that warns of a bleak future for our planet but holds hope for a way forward. There’s a sweet guitar action on this song. I loved the slide guitar which adds to the uneasiness of the song. The whole band joins in the song a little after the one- minute mark. They did a great job combining the sense of apprehension with a sense of hope. “River Man” felt like the highlight in the batch. It’s a six-minute song and “is a semi bio of George Parsonage of the Glasgow Humane Society who for twenty five years, like his father before him, provided river rescue on the stretch of the Clyde in the center of Glasgow. In the chorus Campbell adds social comment on the stresses of life in Glasgow that leads souls to attempt suicide in the river. This song is somber and contains a familiar energy that the band was building on in the previous songs on this EP. However, the song feels pretty epic in scope between the infectious vocals and lead guitar solo. Last up is “The Song of the End” which is a protest against the COP26 conference in Glasgow 2021. The song is under three minutes and felt like the most nostalgic song and something about it did feel patriotic to me. It’s a big sounding song and one I could imagine an audience full of people singing along with. On top of that there’s a slight Celtic quality to the song. This EP felt cohesive to me. I would say there’s a somber, reflective and pensive quality to the EP as a whole but each song has subtle shades of emotion that make it distinct enough. These are earnest and heartfelt songs with a good amount of emotion at the end of the day. Take a listen.
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