BIOGRAPHY - GREAT NORTHERN

Great Northern, formed by Solon Bixler and Rachel Stolte, joined by the talents of drummer Davey Latter and bassist Ashley Dzerigian.

Great Northern found fertile creative ground when they met engineer/producer Mathias Schneeberger through a mutual friend and recorded Trading Twilight for Daylight at Schneeberger’s Donner & Blitzen studio in Arcadia, CA.

Trading Twilight for Daylight is a collection of shimmeringly lovely yet wildly contrasting shades of the pop song experience. Densely layered melodies are draped with Stolte and Bixler’s signature velvety chimes, stately piano, luxuriant keyboard string flourishes and smartly counterpointed electric and acoustic guitars. The songs’ very point often seem to suggest the rich emotional textures of a daydream afternoon, as Sunshine gently dims into the dark. The sensual fullness of the sound is like soaking in a bath of warm frequencies. “Doesn’t it make you feel good?” sings Stolte. And later, “Was I dreaming? Was I awake?”

Great Northern songs are genuinely, memorably melodic, and it’s the several coatings of so many melodies within each track that makes them something to return to again and again. “It’s important to Solon and me that the songs have a lot to offer,” says Stolte. “The songs on my mind are the ones that you hear over and over and you hear something new every time.” The very moody “lOw IS a hEIghT” is inarguably a gorgeous song, but what’s it about? A crucial ambiguity raises its pointy head when the band embarks on an extended instrumental coda that brings variation to the main theme, as if crystalizing the essence of the mood the song seeks to convey.

Building to a caterwauling intensity, “Telling Lies” flirts with the epic (in short form, of course) by fusing tremeloed multiple guitars and voices as drummer Davey thrashes artfully. Exhilarating dervishes of high whining keyboard strings and guitars lure you to the bridge, where you might find yourself utterly addicted when they snow this glorious mountain of sound with spine-tingling counterpoint backing “aaah”s.

“There isn’t any specific formula for crafting a song – the song will just tell you what it has to be. It can stem from an emotion, which then evolves lyrically or otherwise. Ultimately, when you listen to a song in your bedroom with headphones, it should be able to take you away, maybe on a little journey.” And for Great Northern, that journey has just begun – and the horizon has never looked so magnificent.

www.greatnorthernmusic.com