Video: OXBOW Release 'Gunwale' Video Ahead of North American Tour

With Oxbow launching their North American tour this Friday in Philadelphia, the band has released a video for "Gunwale," the latest cinematic entry into the band's slate of videos from their recently released album, Love's Holiday (Ipecac Recordings).

'Gunwale,' and the gerund form 'gunwaling,' is described as a trick that you use when you've lost your paddles and it sees you standing at the boat's stern, ON the stern, and moving the boat by squatting and then standing," explains Eugene Robinson. "The lyric itself? Nothing to do with that. And yet it does."

Niko Wenner discusses the recording of the track: "I would record my improvised singing to each of my newborn kids going to sleep or when they would wake predawn needing a diaper or a bottle. Listening later, I realized I was at concert pitch, oddly in-tune with the piano there in the dark, often straight from sleep.

A real discovery after a lifetime of singing. This particular melody, which became the song 'Gunwale,' sung to my intently focused baby boy one early morning in 2018, fit a D Major blues. I arranged the melody for a 15-voice, mixed choir and we recorded two layers in the studio. We had used our final bass, drums, and guitar take the only one with an extended improv at the end. ProTools crashed midway in the first vocal take so we had to restart from there; the final choir chord gave me a shiver of pleasure hearing it sun in the studio the first time. One of my favorite moments on Love's Holiday."

The video was directed by Annapaola Martin, who said: "If you listen to it, 'Gunwale' is a sound wave that drags you away. If you look at it, 'Gunwale' is a journey on the surface of the water, on the border between our reality and the world of abyss, where all of our dreams and fears live."

Tour dates:

October 20 Philadelphia, PA PhilaMOCA

October 21 Portland, ME SPACE

October 22 Brooklyn, NY Elsewhere

November 5 Seattle, WA Substation

November 6 Vancouver, BC Rickshaw Theatre

November 7 Portland, OR Star Theatre

November 9 San Francisco, CA Great American Music Hall

November 10 Los Angeles, CA Regent Theatre

November 11 Mesa, AZ Pub Rock

November 12 Austin, TX Mohawk

Love's Holiday is available now with the collection available on various limited-edition vinyl variants, as well as standard vinyl, CD and digital: https://oxbow.lnk.to/love. OXBOW have released a number of videos in support of the recently released album: "The Night The Room Started Burning," "Lovely Murk (ft. Lingua Ignota)," "Dead Ahead," “Icy White & Crystalline,” and “1000 Hours."

OXBOW is Dan Adams (electrical/acoustic bass), Greg Davis (drums/percussion), Eugene S. Robinson (vocals), and Niko Wenner (guitars/pianos). The San Francisco-born band have released eight studio albums since their inception in 1988, with Pitchfork saying the foursome have released “some of the most eccentric heavy music albums ever.”

Photo credit: Phil Sharp

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