The Brooklyn-based group salamander has made galant strides forward in their musical journey as they have recently released a new single, “xylem,” on top of announcing their debut LP. The LP titled, [container], is an eleven track project set to be released later this Fall on Oct. 18.
salamander is dynamic trio, originally formed by songwriters PJ Hunter and Leo Frampton in 2019, adding in drummer Ben Verde two years later. The band takes improvisation and raw emotion to form an interesting-sonic sound that struggles to be placed in the confines of any genre. In a similar style, their songwriting process is fluid and highly collaborative, with many arrangements, structured ideas, and lyrics coming from multiple members of the band. While some songs, such as “wildfire” and “xylem,” have lyrics and chords written mostly by one of the band members, other songs such as “ride” and “wave” were written in full collaboration.
“xylem” is the second track the band has released from [container] following their previously dropped track “ride.” The new song has a hypnotic and distilled pop beat and melody that blends into the moody vocals of the group. The lyrics themselves, coming mostly from band member Frampton, express haunting ideas surrounding the inevitability of death and trying to grapple and make peace with them saying, “I love this place, I want to be somewhere else/I love this place/We are going somewhere else.”
“This song sprouted from the way I have made peace with this fear, trying to see my own life and generation as part of a cycle bigger and smaller than myself,” Frampton explains. “I wrote the lyrics during springtime, which is the essence of the chords as well. I like the idea that people can interpret ‘place’ differently, zoomed in or out as far as they like.”
The writing process of “xylem” was completely unique with melodies being created by Frampton and Hunter, guitar tones and a resonating mood being brought by Cody Zusman, and production being put together by Carlos Hernandez, among various other hands and voices in the mix. The new song comes with an artistic video visualizer created by Linnea Nugent.
The single is now available on Spotify, YouTube, and all DSP’s.
[container] Track List
01. boomerang
02. xylem
03. unnamed thing 23
04. wildfire
05. unnamed thing 23.1
06. the label
07. instrumental believers
08. ride
09. images
10. wave
11. the 100th meridian
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