There’s cover songs, and then there’s the many ways Leah Wellbaum and Will Gorin have flipped their favorite tracks over the past 15 years. Not just with their longtime band Slothrust either. The Sarah Lawrence grads first bonded over the blues, a way to apply the progressive lesson plans of teachers like Mike Longo — a pianist who played with such jazz pioneers as Dizzy Gillespie and Lee Konitz — to fearless riffs and rhythms that feel like total rewrites.
Gorin is quick to credit Longo’s “Three I’s” lesson — imitation, incubation, and innovation — in particular. The main takeaway? That the best music comes from building upon other people’s ideas, rather than simply replicating or revisiting them.
“One of my all-time favorite quotes is from composer Claude Debussy,” adds Gorin. “I first discovered it in Miles Davis’ biography, when he said ‘music is the space between the notes.’ I approach my playing with that kind of energy, with an emphasis on filling negative space with symmetrical or asymmetrical patterns.”
The same can be said for the two snappy, tightly wound tracks that also landed on I Promise, “Maybe Maybe” and “Magic Glow.” Written by Wellbaum while she was living in Florida last year and ending a “really long and beautifully dramatic relationship,” the songs are both poetic and poppy, working in hummable nods to liminal spaces, ceremonial magic, and eco-sexuality alongside a slick rhythm section (featuring Gorin on drums and bass for the first time) and Welbaum’s manic guitar melodies.
“Will and I have been playing different genres of music in different configurations together for almost 15 years now and that is a big part of our lock,” says Wellbaum. “We know how to work with each other in a variety of different settings and how to communicate outside of what we do specifically. That offers us tremendous freedom.”
“I feel like we have developed our own unique sound to the point where we can ask ourselves ‘what would Slothrust do?’” adds` Gorin. “The paradox being that if Slothrust knew what Slothrust would do, Slothrust would do the opposite.”