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The Silent Years

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Website: http://myspace.com/thesilentyears

Bio: Josh Epstein is certainly no stranger to change. THE SILENT YEARS’ founder and frontman has seen his share of shifts throughout the past four years ... (more) his Detroit- based outfit’s been active, whether it’s in the line-up, musical approach or associations with record labels. And it’s this ever evolving momentum that has fed his creative drive, maintaining a steady pace that, to this day, includes a host of respectable tours and a batch of even more respected recordings.

THE SILENT YEARS’ most recent release was 2008’s The Globe. Recorded in the summer of 2007, The Globe represented a sea change for THE SILENT YEARS on multiple levels. Epstein saw The Globe as a challenging album, as it was based around a prevailing concept, recognizing the universality of life. These intrinsic themes were of a difficult design; Epstein found himself racking his brain on more than one occasion in an effort to finesse his production into something cohesive and thoroughly cogent. In addition, The Globe was also the first major release featuring an entirely new roster of members in THE SILENT YEARS, as Epstein was able to recruit three-fifths of the lineup from Detroit indie rock legends Rescue to join his project.

However, almost immediately after The Globe was completed, THE SILENT YEARS made the decision to begin recording again. In the summer of 2008, Epstein and company began assembling what would become their next release.

“We wanted to have something done before The Globe came out,” he said, explaining that it would “place the band in an advantageous position when it came time to searching for new labels.” The resulting recording is the band’s latest EP, titled Let Go.
Penned in an expeditious, but not hasty, manner (in the course of a week), Epstein found this songwriting process to be a breeze — much unlike that of The Globe.

And for being recorded very recently after the finalization of The Globe, one might anticipate that Let Go’s compositions would be similar to its predecessor. But, as Epstein explains, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Even mere months after the band had wrapped its full-length sessions, the change that has propelled THE SILENT YEARS throughout its tenure was once again imminent — out went the conceptual overtones and in came the introspection, juxtaposed with a dose of optimistic musical creations.

“For the EP, I wanted to go in the complete opposite direction and just get really personal,” Epstein remarks. “I was listening to it when we first finished it, and I was really excited because that is my life for the past six months. That’s how I’ve been feeling, and everything in there is basically, just me. I’m very excited about that — it’s a very personal record.”

The EP was recorded by the band (and various hands) at a number of locations throughout the Detroit area. The dates included stints at a recording studio outside its normal business hours, in Epstein’s bedroom, and even a dilapidated, abandoned health department building. “We did the strings in this big hallway in there,” Epstein notes. “We actually did it all ourselves.”

One spin of Let Go will prove that making such a recording under such unusual circumstances can still yield impressive results, featuring a roster of highly varied material. Scanning through the tracks, one will find easy-paced material counterbalanced by a worthy dose of more resoundingly extroverted and strongly melodic cuts.
“When we do our live shows, we try and incorporate the audience, and make the shows fun for everyone to go to,” Epstein says. “I was starting to run into this issue of almost feeling like things weren’t right because I was trying to make these happy outgoing shows go along with these sad introspective songs. So I think with Let Go we just wanted to keep it light and upbeat. We recorded it in the summer and we were always feeling happy and excited. I don’t think everything has to be so intense. Granted, the lyrics on Let Go are pretty intense, but we just wanted to make it fun and have some stuff that we could play live.”

Yes, Let Go’s unabashedly happy and features a number of strong sing-along components, but Epstein says he didn’t want to shy away from the melodies. Chalk it up to letting the cards fall where they may. “There’s been a tendency to over think things and not in a bad way,” he adds. “But this was the first time we’ve ever just gone with our instincts. With this EP, we really found our stride — this is the music that everyone wanted to make and we weren’t trying to make it a certain way. This was made in the moment for me and it seems like it’s going to stick with me for a long time.”

As for the EP’s title, Epstein says that there’s a realization that he’s had to move on, move forward, and perhaps, accept — and embrace — the change that’s pervaded his musical pursuits, something he’s been chasing since he was in his teens. “Let Go, I think, just summed up everything for me,” he says. “I don’t know why. After we wrote it and we were trying to name it, I just thought it summed it up. I think it’s a lot of trying to move on, and letting go of everything. There’s this certain perfectionism in the making of the EP. For the mixing, I spent three weeks pulling 17-hour days to make it perfect. And to a certain extent, it feels like it’s time to let it go, let it go out there." (less)