Keeping Duncan Fellows Eyelids Shut on their new EP
Photo Credit: Grace Lillash
Austin five-piece Duncan Fellows have today released their EP Eyelids Shut via Level. The EP features previously released singles “Deathwish Fish” and “Cursive Tattoo.” The album is available for stream and purchase HERE.
Duncan Fellows has also announced a massive North American Fall co-headline tour with Nashville-based band Sun Seeker. The tour kicks off in Columbus, OH on October 11 and takes them to LA, NYC, DC, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Chicago and many more. They will be in Michigan on October 13th at the Pike Room in the Pontiac.
The music of Duncan Fellows explores multiple vibes, feelings, tempos, and perspectives—and often in the same song. With the new EP Eyelids Shut, the five-piece from Austin explores that dynamic balance while concurrently toeing a similar line in their own lives.
Named for the address of a ramshackle house inhabited by several of the bandmates in their formative years, they’ve now—with everyone firmly in their mid-20’s—traded a life of piling into various bedrooms for piling into a tour van, creating a mobile Duncan Lane of sorts by staying true to that era’s sensibilities of shared adventure. Fronted by Colin Harman (vocals/guitar) and Cullen Trevino (guitar/vocals), the lineup is rounded out by Jack Malonis (keyboards/backup vocals/guitar), Tim Hagen (drums), and David Stimson (bass), with musical input coming from all corners.
Typically, Harman and Trevino do most of the songwriting—alone or together—and once a song’s bones are in place they bring it to the larger group to develop the arrangements and individual parts as a band. The live-in-a-room collaborating is an integral part of the process, and oftentimes tidbits from other music the band members are listening to will find their way into the works. But the sonic details are decided first and foremost by the emotions that push each song along. As Malonis says, “We believe heavily in trying to serve the spirit of a song, so when we’re arranging as a band we really want to bring that out as best we can.”
“We tend towards the deeper stuff you have to chew on longer,” Harman says. “Our tendency is to sing about the more difficult things we encounter in life, and as we’ve gotten older we’ve experienced heavy things that have added more serious layers to what we do. But at the same time our most popular song is largely about waking up and making breakfast. We definitely talk about straddling that line.”
And with the release of the new Eyelids Shut EP, the band is establishing that double-edged identity even further. The four songs here are doused in maturity, both thematically and sonically. “Loss” and “reflection” are the words the band points to when discussing what the songs are about, and how aging lends fresh perspective to such topics. “As you get older, your perspective on things like loss changes but you still live with everything that’s happened to you,” Trevino says.
“Be it the loss of a person, or even the loss of a version of a person,” Harman adds. “Death is definitely a part of it, but change and a part of someone being lost is something we are singing about as well.”
Malonis finishes the thought: “I also resonate with losing a version of yourself, how as you’re experiencing these losses you’re losing the more naive parts of yourself. A lot of it lines up with the theme of our first album: becoming an adult and growing wise to the ills and parts of the world that aren’t so pretty.”
