Smallpools called their shot with "Dreaming" - in the ten years since their 2013 debut single, the trio's experience has been nothing short of truly surreal. They've played festivals from Lollapalooza to Summerfest, earned RIAA gold and platinum plaques, amassed over 400 million Spotify streams, held their own in arenas and late night TV and, along with their peers and collaborators like Grouplove, Walk the Moon, Twenty One Pilots and Neon Trees, developed the sound that played a pivotal role to the development of the alt pop scene. They literally got "big in Japan," where "Dreaming" became a #1 single in 2015.
But lead vocalist Sean Scanlon did not draw on these incredible, indelible experiences when it came time to write the next chapter for Smallpools. Rather, he time traveled to the period right before the self-titled Smallpools EP in 2013, when he worked as a valet in a garishly opulent Los Angeles high rise. Scanlon would sequester himself In a model unit that was completely empty, save for Fendi furniture and the piano at which he composed most of the lyrics that ended up on "Dreaming." This was the seed from which "Night Shift" grew, the opener of their third studio LP Ghost Town Road, and also the first song of the rest of Smallpools' lives.
As a project that splits time between Los Angeles and Nashville, Scanlon, guitarist/producer Michael Kamerman and drummer Beau Kuther reflected on the evolution of each city in the decade since "Dreaming." "When the band first started, the goal was to play the free Monday nights at the Satellite, that's all we wanted to do," Kuther recalls.
Ghost Town Road announces a bold new era for Smallpools, while also a spiritual heir to the 2013 EP that started it all. "I feel like that was a definitive body of work, we were dialed in, you know?," Scanlon muses. "With this project, we're dialed back in." Kamerman views it less like a sequel and more like a franchise reboot a la Halloween or Ghostbusters - "The other music exists and you're free to revisit it," he states. "But we're back and we mean it."
