Comprising Sydney Sollazzo on vocals and keyboards, Graham Walker on guitars, Austin Sharpe on bass, and Costa Chatzis on percussion and backing vocals, Ontario pseudo-rockers Bad Reed have just released their first professional studio EP.
The band came together in March last year, with all members having backgrounds with other bands, and recorded their self-titled EP after about a year’s writing and re-writing the three songs featured. This apparent perfectionism has been harnessed to good effect: lead song, ‘Slackjaw Romance’, is a neo-sixties style track, while ‘Cassava’ is a much rockier song, maintaining a cautious balance between Sollazzo’s strident lyrics and the instrumentation. Third song on the EP, ‘Punch It’, is a pleasingly cacophonic mix of hard rock drums and guitars and swirling keyboards – a psychedelic trip of a song it loops around the ears and settles deeply into the brain.
Speaking of the EP, Bad Reed said,
“Really what made this work is that we were all dedicated to our instruments and our aspirations. As a result of that, the four of us, in the beginning would rehearse five or six times a week. This went on for about a year. The three songs on our EP were written and then re-written multiple times. Although doing that would seem unusual but it was us figuring one another out and pushing ourselves and band mates to find something truly unique. So when someone heard our music they would say, “This sounds like Bad Reed.””
‘Bad Reed’ is available as a free download, with the band touring South East Canada in support of the EP.
You can find Bad Reed online on their website, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Soundcloud and Youtube. Find their EP on Bandcamp.
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