LEVERAGE MODELS
W H I T E S
ANACHRONISME RECORDS | AE001 | DIGITAL / CASSETTE
WHITES | Released October 26, 2018
ORDER
Limited Edition Cassette Tapes | Bandcamp | Amazon | iTunes
TRACKLIST
-
Day One (4:46)
-
A Scout's Prayer (What a Man Knows) (3:04)
-
Dark Pools (Music Will Not Save Us) (4:24)
-
When the Money's Gone (2:58)
-
If I Let You Stay (3:49)
-
Very Small People (2:15)
-
Senators (3:54)
-
A life around terrified animals (3:43)
-
Your Healthiest Friends (3:45)
-
Runners (2:45)
Personnel
Written, Recorded, Produced by: Shannon Fields
Additional Vocals: Alena Spanger, Andrew Carlson & Dave Scanlon
Bass Guitars: Andrew Carlson & Rob Lundberg
Drums & Percussion: Jeff Gretz & Max Jaffe
Guitars: Dave Scanlon
Additional Recording: Jim Bertini, Galaxy Smith, Brooklyn, NY; Additional Recording & Mixed by: D. James Goodwin @ THE ISOKON, Woodstock NY
Also Featuring:
Joseph Shabason,, Jon Natchez , Anthony LaMarca
Cover Photograph:
Stones in my Pocket, 2013 © Gehard Demetz. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
ABOUT the album
Whites, the 2nd full-length album by Leverage Models, was released Oct. 26th, 2018 on new label Anachronisme (launched by former Praemedia label founder, Lance Grabmiller). Fifty percent of label and artist proceeds are donated to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
We finished recording Whites in 2015. Small-label economic troubles initially delayed release in early 2016, and the band has been on live hiatus since the 2016 American presidential election. As hard as we worked on this record and wanted it to be heard, I couldn’t keep being entertaining and pushing my record, saying ‘look at me! love me!’ every night, in the face of what was happening in the country, so I shelved it. Now isolation feels unhelpful too. And honestly, it all sounds and feels a lot better and more meaningful now than when we mixed it. Sometimes you just need to walk away for a minute.
These songs are a lot of what we were performing while touring North America from 2015-2016. Those who saw us saw a band wrestling with anxiety and joy at the same time (if you've never tried dropping your carefully constructed daily self-presentation and ripped yourself to pieces in front of strangers until you're crying and laughing and bruised and sore [seriously...I broke a rib at a show in Detroit] and sweaty, embarrassed and emptied of all of the bad feelings, I recommend it ... it's awfully liberating). These shows were a messy, excited-slash-terrified outward expression of who we were as a family, hashing things out in our own little timezone. Musically, this album captures that.
We didn't set out to make a political record in that specifically preachy, binary, self-righteous way that may result in good activism but usually makes for boring art. I don't know how to describe it to you beyond that. I don't know what the record is, exactly. I don't know what *I* am, exactly. Do you? If not, I think that's a good thing. What's hard to accept is that so many of us don't seem to have the luxury of saying that. No matter what shape our interiors are. I know we don't have to accept that.
Anyway, here's some pop music we made. We hope you both enjoy and find something to care about here.
xo shannon & the rest of leverage models
The SPLC is an “American nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation.” Founded by civil rights lawyers to combat institutional racism, the SPLC monitors domestic hate groups and provides legal challenges “to protect the civil rights of children, women, the disabled, immigrants and migrant workers, the LGBT community, prisoners, and many others who faced discrimination, abuse or exploitation.”