It’s been four years since Nevada Color has released any new music. But that doesn’t mean the group of Point Park graduates has been idly sitting around. Nevada Color has been touring. They’ve been writing. They've been working with producers and songwriters in Los Angeles and Nashville.
And today Nevada Color dropped a three-track EP entitled, Rosewater, the name representing a new beginning.
After the indie-rock group released its debut LP, Adventures, in 2014, the band signed a deal with the label Great Point Media. What Nevada Color wanted its music to be, and what the record label wanted, differed, however. During the bands time with Great Point Media, Nevada Color recorded about 300 songs and an EP, none of which were released.
Rosewater, for Nevada Color, is a fresh start. A reflection of the past four years.
“Leaving the record label is like turning a new leaf," says guitarist Adam Valen. "The label just had certain expectations as far as the style of music went. Our finished material was a little off expectation from what they wanted, and we just couldn’t come to terms with putting it out so we kind of just cataloged it.”
But the time Nevada Color spent with Great Point Media didn’t go to waste. Working with the label gave singer Quinn Wirth and guitarist Max Kovalchuk the opportunity to travel and participate in co-writing sessions with multi-platinum record producer Matt Mahaffey, producer/songwriter Cason Cooley, bluegrass guitarist and vocalist Josh Williams, and artist Kurtis John to name a few.
“It is one of those situations, where who’s to say we’d be where we
Although none of the songs on Rosewater were born from that period, the time spent working in LA and Nashville heavily influenced Nevada Color’s music.
“We were able to direct our sound to more of a pop sensibility and tinker with sounds when recording,” says Valen. “We really homed in on what we wanted the record to sound like and what we wanted the new songs to sound like.”
This pop-style, indie rock change of pace is evident in the upbeat, stirring radio-ready tracks on Rosewater. Their music is polished with more complicated instrumental layering than what was found in Adventures.
The band’s collective favorite, “Outsiders,” is a blissful, harmonically rich track that Valen says is the most representative song to reintroduce Nevada Color to the world. It showcases their genre mastery and previewed on Alternative Press earlier this week.
"[AP] is a publication I followed since middle school, so it's kind of wild," says Valen. "We wanted to partner with somebody that fit the sound and audience, that would want to introduce one of our songs. We've been working towards this moment for the last four years and it’s finally happening."
