Losing My Shadow, Aan, Cassette

Aan (short for "Amor ad nauseam") is a psychedelic-pop group from Portland, Oregon. On record, the heart of the group is songwriter/frontman Bud Wilson, and live they come together as an explosive five-piece ensemble. Wilson lives on a small farm several miles outside of town in a small house, surrounded by ducks, chickens, coyotes and trees, where he writes most of his songs. Although the end result is a long aural drive from anything resembling the countryside, the music retains the sincerity of that familial place - a feeling of home - a home that Wilson invites the world into through his new album, Losing My Shadow, out this spring on Fresh Selects. Pastoral stomping grounds aside, Aan's music puts forth a gritty, progressive, searing sonic boom of sound that might just be the exact wake-up call the current indie climate needs. Never one for taking the beaten path, Wilson opened himself up and dove head-first through the thicket when writing this latest offering. The album finds the singer/multi-instrumentalist parsing through his inner-most thoughts, feelings, and vices after the sudden passing of his father two years ago. At perhaps it's most wrenching moments, the album deals with Wilson attempting to understand his mother's perspective in this new world, without her partner for the first time. A therapeutic exercise as much as it is an exorcism, his all-too-personal storytelling reckons with the demons that often find their way in when one is living with grief, and how important it can be to cast them out before they consume the soul. Taking a more personal approach on this album than on Aan's previous, more band-oriented records - this time out, Bud locked himself in a studio with producer/musician, Cameron Spies (Radiation City, Reptaliens, The Saxophones) for months on end, working together to build up, then deconstruct and re-tool these songs over and over, until they each reached their most vital and essential form. Once the lightning was officially in the bottle, Aan teamed up with Portland's own Fresh Selects for the new album's relea