Sylvan Esso was not meant to be a band.  Rather, Amelia Meath had written a song called “Play It Right” and sung it with her trio Mountain Man.  She’d met Nick Sanborn, an electronic producer working under the name Made of Oak, in passing on a shared bill in a small club somewhere.  She asked him to scramble it, to render her work his way.  He did the obligatory remix, but he sensed that there was something more important here than a one-time handoff: Of all the songs Sanborn had ever recast, this was the first time he felt he’d added to the raw material without subtracting from it, as though, across the unseen wires of online file exchange, he’d found his new collaborator without even looking.
Meath felt it, too.  Schedules aligned.  Moves were made.  And as 2012 slipped into 2013, Sanborn and Meath reconvened in the unlikely artistic hub of Durham, N.C., a former manufacturing town with cheap rent and good food.  Sylvan Esso became a band.  A year later, their self-titled debut—a collection of vivid addictions concerning suffering and love, darkness and deliverance—arrives as a necessary pop balm, an album stuffed with songs that don’t suffer the longstanding complications of that term.
These 10 tunes were realized and recorded in Sanborn’s Durham bedroom during the last year, an impressive feat considering the layers of activity and effects that populate them—the dizzyingly crisscrossed harmonies of “Play it Right,” the gorgeously incongruous elements of “Wolf,” the surreptitiously minimalist momentum of “HSKT.”  Sanborn’s production is fully modern and wonderfully active.  He enlists obliterating dubstep stutters and crisp electropop pulses, hazy electrostatic breezes and epinephrine dancefloor turnarounds.
But this isn’t a workout in production skills or a demonstration of electronic erudition.  Instead, his music syncs seamlessly with Meath’s melodies, so that the respective words and beats become a string of ready-to-play singles.
Catch them live here:
6/20 Pittsburgh, PA – Cattivo
6/22 New York, NY – Webster Hall # **SOLD OUT**
6/23 New York, NY – Webster Hall # **SOLD OUT**
6/28 Milwaukee, WI – Burnhearts Street Festival
7/26 Minneapolis, MN – 10 Thousand Sounds Festival ~
8/14 Asheville, NC – The Mothlight *
8/15 Atlanta, GA – The Earl *
8/16 New Orleans, LA – Gasa Gasa *
8/17 Austin, TX – The Parish *
8/19 Tucson, AZ – Club Congress *
8/20 San Diego, CA – Casbah *
8/22 Los Angeles, CA – The Troubadour *
8/23 San Francisco, CA – The Independent *
8/25 Portland, OR – Doug Fir *
8/26 Seattle, WA – Barboza *
8/27 Boise, ID – Neurolux *
8/29 Salt Lake City, UT – Kilby Court *
8/30 Denver, CO – Hi Dive *
9/4 Madison, WI – The Frequency
9/5 Milwaukee, WI – Cactus Club
9/6 Chicago, IL – Hideout Block Party & AV Fest ^
9/9 Burlington, VT – Higher Ground +
9/10 Boston, MA – The Sinclair +
9/11 Brooklyn, NY – Rough Trade NYC
9/12 New York, NY – Bowery Ballroom + **SOLD OUT**
9/17 Dresden, DE – Altes Wettburo
9/19 Hamburg, DE – Hamburg Introducing
9/18 Berlin, DE – Introducing Berlin @ Schwutz
9/20 Essen, DE – King Kong Kicks @ Hotel Shanghai
9/22 Cologne, DE – Studio 672
9/23 Luxembourg – Rockhal
9/25 Amsterdam, NL – Paradiso
9/26 Antwerp, BE – Trix Bar
9/27 Paris, FR – Badaboum
9/28 Zurich, CH – Stall 6
9/30 Brighton, UK – Green Door Store
10/1 Birmingham, UK – Hare and Hounds
10/2 London, UK – Oslo
10/3 Bristol, UK – Louisiana
10/4 Cardiff, UK – Buffalo Bar
10/6 Manchester, UK – Soup Kitchen
10/7 Dublin, IE – Workman’s Club
10/8 Belfast, IE – Black Box
10/9 Glasgow, UK – Nice ’n’ Sleazy
10/31 Saxapahaw, NC – Haw River Ballroom
# with Tune-Yards
~with Polica
* with Dana Buoy
^ with Death Cab For Cutie, Dismemberment Plan, Mac Demarco, etc
+ with Doe Paoro