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Dec 13, 2018 By Christopher Roberts Chewing

Chewing is the solo project of Local Natives’ Nik Ewing. He has announced a new album where he covers Dennis Wilson’s 1977 classic Pacific Ocean Blue in its entirety as part of Turntable Kitchen’s Sounds Delicious Series. He has shared two tracks from it: “River Song” (which features the rest of Local Natives) and Moonshine (which features Cults). The album is due out December 21. Listen to the two tracks below.

Ewing had this to say about the album in a press release: “With zero hyperbole, driving across LA can take half an hour or four days. One of the more manageable times I drove across the city, it took me 37:15, the length of Pacific Ocean Blue by Dennis Wilson. Like many important first album listening experiences, the entire environment surrounding that listen burnt into my memory. It was like that sad, dark album was made specifically for that specific sad, dark drive across LA. A haunted, outcast Beach Boy who still sung simple Beach Boy lyrics like ‘I’m sorry, I miss you’ but whose weathered voice is painfully more honest without the hollow late ‘70s shine from his band (who seemingly didn’t miss him that much).

“I really love when artists give their own radical take on a song (Jukebox by Cat Power is criminally underrated IMO). Luckily this album isn’t as ‘sacred’ as if I covered Pet Sounds in its entirety, which allowed me a lot more liberty. I wanted to re-imagine this album in a much darker and ambient context: to flow like a lost mixtape, to sound cohesive with all the voices (and trumpet, hi Nico!) weaving in and out throughout (and obviously I couldn’t NOT have my band contribute beautiful, lush harmonies to a Beach Boy cover album).”

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