North Carolina’s Stray Owls, led by experimental mastermind Nick DeVan, is back with “Scapegoats,” a genre-blurring single that gives listeners a tease of its most adventurous album to date, When the Going Gets Weird. Very few bands are capable of venturing into unexplored territory both in terms of sound and sentiment like this, leaving the listener not just a little dazed by bright lights and sounds but also with a sense that they have taken the listener on a journey not just musically but philosophically with an album that is a kaleidoscope of sound and thought, an album in which pieces fit together like a musical jigsaw puzzle.
“Scapegoats” captures the essence of their transformative journey well. Woven with the threads of Meddle-era Pink Floyd psychedelia and cradled in post-rock surges, the song is a tapestry of intricate textures and heartfelt lyrics. The song’s eerie melodies unfurl like a dream disintegrating, knitting mandolin and piano into a lo-fi grit.
The pandemic required the band to reconsider how they worked together, forming a collaborative puzzle that redefined their creative identity. “We didn’t have a photo on the box to go by,” guitarist and vocalist Matt French confesses. But from that ambiguity came a record rich with new dimensions. Adding instruments like the dumbek and the ukulele, along with expanded roles for each player, has given way to their most prosperous musical landscape.
Lyrically, “Scapegoats” is an existential reckoning. Its meditative introspection resonates with anyone seeking clarity among life’s noise.
Stray Owls’ When the Going Gets Weird a Declaration. It dates to when a band dared to become what it might become if there’s enough time to become anything, and the unpredictable becomes routine. With “Scapegoats,” they take us on an evocative, immersive journey, one that has the feel as much of rediscovery as of reinvention.
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