(Indie Rock, Alt.Country, Indie Folk) Slow Parades - Love Me To Death - 2012, MP3, 320 kbps

Slow Parades is a new project from songwriter-multi-instrumentalist Mike Jasinski and drummer Tim Minnick. From the opening notes, the duo’s debut album Love Me To Death recalls the well-crafted sunshine pop of The 1900s, the Chicago band Jasinski and Minnick helped form in 2004. After leaving the 1900s in 2008, Jasinski took a hard look at life and holed up for a year writing songs to move forward musically. Teaming up with Minnick, the old friends built a makeshift studio in a Logan Square basement and began recording the basic tracks for what would become Love Me To Death. After Minnick embarked on a yearlong trip around the world, Jasinski spent nearly that long finishing the album at Benjamin Balcom’s Minbal Studio (Atlas Sound, White Rabbits) on Chicago’s West Side, enlisting Chicago by-way-of Austin musician Todd Pertll on pedal steel and banjo as well as Balcom’s arrangement and production skills. The finished album fuses perfectly crafted chorus hooks, vintage keys, and elegantly finessed drums with Jasinski’s own voice and observations on life. It brings together the lilting country-rock of Gram Parsons, frenzied orchestral pop of Sufjan Stevens, and the combo organ-charged garage rock of the Nuggets compilations.
One of the last songs on the album is the 37-second trumpet and synth blast “Prelude”, which recalls a slow, boozy street parade in New Orleans, or maybe a hot summer day on the South Side of Chicago. Wherever that slow parade was, Jasinski seems satisfied with where life has led him. In his own words, he says Love Me To Death is about “looking inward instead of outward… accepting that I grew up in Chicago, I lived here, and who knows maybe I’ll die here—but there’s everything that happens in between.”

All songs written and recorded by Mike Jasinski and Tim Minnick
Additional Players:
Todd Pertll – Pedal Steel, Banjo
Ryan Laverty – Bass
Emily Lewis – Vocals
Tom Forkenbrocke – trumpet, coronet
Mark Thomson – Trombone
Benjamin Balcom – keyboards, bass
Raymond Jasinski - Fender Rhodes
Additional production, arrangement, and recording by Benjamin Balcom
Mixed by Benjamin Balcom at MINBAL Studio, Chicago
Cover art by Rachel Yas
Mastered by Matt Engstrom