Slaughter Beach, Dog have shared ‘Engine’, the final advance single off their upcoming album Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling – out September 22 via Lame-O Records. It follows previous entries ‘Strange Weather’, ‘Float Away’, and ‘Summer Windows’. Listen to the 9-minute track below.
In a statement about ‘Engine’, the band’s Jake Ewald explained:
This song keeps changing for me. First, I didn’t think it was about anything. Then I thought it was about the van. Then I thought it was about [Slaughter Beach, Dog bassist] Ian [Farmer], and I couldn’t figure out why the guitar solo kept making me cry. Outside the Sinclair in January, I saw a flyer for a house show and remembered how long we’ve been doing this. Then my heart was in my shoes. Ten years of thinking a different life was right around the corner, selling off all this heavy machinery and making spreadsheets for somebody, futzing with chickenwire, everything more simple.
Lately this song feels like. a eulogy for the change that never came. Ten years gone and I’m still squirming under freedom’s thumb, too easily forgetting rock’n’roll, my great hulking vessel, a framework to swing from, a history to make home inside of. Forms to learn, rules to break, comrades to find, mysteries turned over ad infinitum, inexplicable monsoons of the heart. I’m still finding myself inside this song, still learning to accept that I lived it. Some of it spooks me. I can hear it in the pain of belonging – standing in one place long enough to not take leaving lightly. Staying put when the outlaws arrive at night. Saying very quietly to no one, this is where I live.