The winter of 2015 was pretty miserable. But as a record amount of snow fell around Boston and frozen misery gripped the region, garage-pop/guitar-rock band Bent Shapes were plenty productive. Principal songwriters Ben Potrykus and Andy Sadoway shacked up at the Soul Shop in Medford during one of the many blizzards and crafted Wolves of Want, Bent Shapes’ new LP that will be released by Slumberland Records on March 11.
The new record is the follow-up to 2013’s Feels Weird (Father/Daughter Records), and the first track,”New Starts In Old Dominion”, can be heard below via the Slumberland Soundcloud. The 10-song Wolves of Want was recorded with Elio DeLuca (Titus Andronicus), and mastered by TW Walsh (Pedro the Lion).
“The basic format for how songs came together was the same: Ben would write a guitar riff or vocal melody along with some chords and then we would hash out the arrangement in our rehearsal space,” says Sadoway. “Even with a relatively small number of tracks, we were able to bring in some additional instruments that we hadn’t added to our palette before: cello, trumpet, trombone to name a few.”
The new LP is said to be thematically centered around Potrykus recent diagnosis with multiple anxiety disorders. “I talk about it openly, because what helped me when I felt isolated and alone was reading books and listening to interviews by comedians and writers that had dealt with the same thing,” he says. “The mainstream perception of a given disorder isn’t always accurate, and I don’t want anyone to feel like I did when things were at their worst… Writing about it was cathartic for me, as well — documenting how I was feeling gave me a way of contextualizing a personal crisis that made it seem like something I could overcome.”
Bent Shapes play ONCE Ballroom in Somerville on February 12 for Walsh’s record release party, then celebrate the release of Wolves Of Want at Great Scott in Allston on March 10.