• News

• All

Aug 09, 2021 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Zoe Johnson

Rene Duplantier, the singer/songwriter behind Louisiana-based alt folk band Slow Rosary, grew up in the shadow of a Louisiana refinery. The band’s upcoming record, Refinery, captures the spirit of those early days, seeped in stark, stripped landscapes, thunderous industry, and Catholic surrealism. Together the band recasts Duplantier’s intimate existential reflections into ambitious soundscapes. The band has already shared a handful of singles from the record, including last month’s standout “Evangeline,” and now Slow Rosary is back with “Subaquatic Heartbroke Alien,” premiering with Under the Radar.

Though the name for the band’s latest single riffs on “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” Slow Rosary’s musical approach is miles away from the classic Dylan tune. Rather, Duplantier lets his arrangement breathe and sigh, drawing out a yearning honesty from the track. Duplantier’s howling melodies and stripped-back arrangements bring to mind Bright Eyes or The Mountain Goats, but his approach is filtered through a disarming plainspoken lyrical beauty. Backed only by plodding banjo lines and gentle fiddle melodies, the band traces a moving picture of love and loss in New Orleans.

As Duplantier explains, “‘New Orleans is the center of the world’ is a quote by a friend who often tries to justify (to himself) moving here for work. In reality, New Orleans can be a bit of a beach, it’s laid back with an occasional hurricane that makes everyone move around. ‘Subaquatic’ is a melodramatic rehashing of my experience of getting left behind here in the Big Easy by a former partner who, very fairly, wanted more than the city had to offer.”

Check out the song below and watch for Refinery, due out August 27th.