Cold Weather Company premiered a new single "Do No Harm" via Popmatters, prior to its release this Friday, November 30 - share via Soundcloud. In addition, the New Jersey trio announced a New York City release celebration for their new album, Find Light, January 23 at the Mercury Lounge, prior to the album's January 25 arrival.
Discussing the single, pianist/vocalist Steve Shimchick stated, "Do No Harm" is essentially the sequel to our song "Clover"... both inspired by different stages of the same exciting, yet fleeting relationship. Where "Clover" was written during the whirlwind, with those feelings of optimism and hope that a lasting resolution could be found, "Do No Harm" was written after the flame was snuffed. While many songs on 'Find Light' include a struggle between positive and negative themes within the same verses, "Do No Harm" stays dark. As we all know, some experiences that bring our greatest moments of joy and light, end in a final, unavoidable flash, leaving us in a temporary void. In this situation, the struggle to make things last depicted in "Clover" had ended, leaving me to sum up my realizations without the disguise of double-sided memories clouding the mind. The remaining feelings from it all allowed "Do No Harm" to become one of the most dramatic songs we've written - helping to fill the darkest space of the album's emotional spectrum.
Shimchick with guitarist/vocalists Brian Curry and Jeff Petescia met at Rutgers University, self-releasing two full-length albums and building an ever expanding fanbase through performances along the eastern seaboard. With Find Light, "We wanted to open up and find our unique sound. And now we're going to places in songs we never thought we could go," says Shimchick. Recording with producer Pat Noon (River City Extension, The Front Bottoms, Brick + Mortar) and Grammy-winning engineer Alan Douches (Sufjan Stevens, Beirut, Grizzly Bear), the group expands mightily on their core of two guitars and a piano, joined by a number of friends and contemporaries on percussion, bass, cello, violin, trumpet, flute, sax and clarinet, creating a soundtrack that moves far beyond the band's lean sounds of 2015's Somewhere New and 2016's A Folded Letter.
With three songwriters contributing material, Find Light is impressively hard to classify. Each member of the band coming from their own perspective, training and influences Yet there is perhaps an unexpected cohesion to the songs, and a central theme about rising above, reclaiming your life, working through conflict and seeing the bigger picture - finding light in the darkness.
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