Toronto barrage rock sextet, Dearly Beloved, have released their take on DEVO’s “Explosions,” featured on their upcoming new album Walker Park, due out January 24, 2023, on Sonic Unyon Records. Pre-save Walker Park here.
Discussing their cover of “Explosions,” songwriter/producer/bassist Rob Higgins noted,
“‘Explosions’ was the last thing we did together all in the same room at the same time. We recorded it in Toronto at my home studio, Phoebe Street, right before we were about to leave for six weeks overseas opening for Sebadoh. The tour was eventually scrapped because of COVID, and after recording this cover we all went our separate ways, not knowing it would be two and a half years until our next hang.”
The follow-up to 2019’s Time Square Discount, which was written entirely while on the road and recorded in a two-week blitz with Daniel Rey at Dave Grohl’s Studio 606, Walker Park, took shape while Higgins was writing and recording at home in his Phoebe Street studio, to cope with the pandemic. While brutal for all, the lockdown provided never-before-experienced freedom to work patiently and use the studio as an instrument itself, eventually mixing the album with bandmate and Slow Pineapple production partner Tyler Beans.
The sessions delivered thematic ambition, sonic verve, and evocative playing in spades while never skimping on the scorched-earth riffs Dearly Beloved have become known for. The work and craft that went into the album conveys the deeply weird world in which it was spawned – “Listening back now, the record appears to reflect the absurdity of those times,” notes Higgins.
For the past 16 years, the Beloved’s collision and fusion of pop and hardcore sensibilities, melody, and menace has offered up unabashed stoner rock coiled like smoke around a magma core of psychedelic post-grunge. Walker Park anchors itself in the lessons learned and launches the band on an exciting new trajectory.
“The songs started as super long bass and drum jams I built myself at home,” explains Higgins. “I’d play for like 15 minutes and record it all. Then I’d go looking for good bits. Once whittled into a form, I’d send the song to the band to freak out on.”
Of the 16 finished tracks arising from those sessions, 10 eventually coalesced as Walker Park, with songs selected to reflect the zeitgeist cohesively while also communicating a narrative arc.