When: 7pm on Sunday 25 November 2018
Where: YES (The Pink Room), 38 Charles Street, Manchester M1 7DB

We’re delighted to be working with Saintseneca for the first time – and new venue YES!

Saintseneca’s Zac Little has been thinking a lot about memory. Not necessarily his memories, though they creep in often too. Rather, he mulls over the idea of memory itself: its resilience, its haziness, how it slips away as we try to hang on, the way it resurfaces despite our best efforts to forget.

Memory is the common thread running throughout the Columbus folk-punk band’s fourth album, Pillar of Na, arriving in late summer via ANTI- Records. Following 2015’s critically lauded Such Things, the new album’s name is rooted in remembrance, referencing the Genesis story of Lot’s wife who looks back at a burning Sodom after God instructs her not to. She looks back, and God turns her into a pillar of salt. ‘Na,’ meanwhile, is the chemical symbol for sodium. ‘Nah’ is a passive refusal and the universal song word. It means nothing and stands for nothing. It is ‘as it is’.

Like Lot’s wife, Little cannot help but revisit where – and how – he grew up. Raised in church in southeastern Appalachian Ohio, he took up preaching when he was still a teenager, sometimes in small country settings and other times to congregations of thousands. But these days he’s more interested in listening. And questioning.

Musically, Pillar of Na is Saintseneca’s most ambitious album to date, with Little aiming to incorporate genre elements he’d rarely heard in folk. ‘I wanted to use the idiom of folk-rock, or whatever you want to call it, and to try to do something that had never been done before,’ Little explains. ‘To reach way back, echoing ancient folk melodies, tie that into punk rock, and then push it into the future. I told Mike Mogis I wanted Violent Femmes meets the new Blade Runner soundtrack. I’m looking for the intersection between Kendrick Lamar and Fairport Convention.’

‘You’re always going to be situated in the folk legacy,’ Little continues, acknowledging his past recordings, which include three albums (the aforementioned Such Things, 2014’s Dark Arc, 2011’s Last) and three EPs (2016’s The Mallwalker, 2010’s Grey Flag and 2009’s self-titled). ‘But let’s move forward. I’m not trying to make the lost Velvet Underground B-side. I want to find something that has never been heard before, or at least go down trying.’

Local support comes from South Island Son. Setting up home in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, the South Island Son boys have had a busy nine months in office. Since their debut sell out gig, the band have been busy picking up airplay on BBC 6 Music and BBC Introducing, and touring in France following their single Down The Slopes as well as cropping up at festivals during the summer.

Buy tickets now. Tickets are available from Vinyl Exchange, WeGotTickets.com, Ticketline.co.uk and on 0871 220 0260.

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