Descended Like Vultures - SP677

This is where Rogue Wave, the band, really gets started. As Oakland-based singer/songwriter/arranger Zach Rogue puts it, “this record is the sound of four people’s ideas colliding.” Descended Like Vultures, Rogue Wave’s second full-length for Sub Pop, is a velvety, darkly dichotomous album: pop vs. despair; hope vs. realism. Whereas Rogue’s ‘04 release, Out of the Shadow, was for all intents and purposes a solo project, Descended Like Vultures finds Zach Rogue’s unapologetic hooks and soaring melodies built up skyscraper-high by bandmates and mulit-instrumentalists Pat Spurgeon, Gram LeBron and Evan Farrell, who have grown close and road-seasoned thanks to a year of intensive international touring with The Shins, The Helio Sequence, TV on the Radio, and Mates of State. While the new album isn’t an overtly political record, (rather, it’s more humanitarian) Zach Rogue’s impeccable songwriting was heavily informed by what he and his band experienced on the road. “I think anyone who is sensitive to what’s going on around them has to feel a sense of foreboding and dread,” he explains. “You see so many possibilities left behind.” And, on this release, Rogue Wave leaves no stone unturned, no possibility unexplored. Descended Like Vultures was recorded at Supernatural Sound outside of Portland, Oregon and was engineered by Bill Racine. The album was produced by Racine and Zach Rogue.

Released: 2005-10-25 (CD), 2005-10-25 (LP)