An apt introduction to introspection.
If, at first, a pandemic brings your career to a screeching halt, stick to your sound and get the band back together. Six years after their 2019 album “In The Clearing”, Norway’s psychedelic folk-rock band Sugarfoot were propelled to new heights when an email arrived in their inbox. It was from Waterboys lead singer Mike Scott, who had fallen in love with their sound.
It’s clear where Sugarfoot’s inspiration comes from. The vocals mesh together to create Cerberus with the heads of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Grateful Dead, and CSNY. Scott heard all he needed to hear and requested that they sing on ‘The Tourist’, from The Waterboys’ latest, “Life, Death and Dennis Hopper”.
As the band goes full steam ahead with this new chapter, including opening for The Waterboys on their UK tour this past spring, Sugarfoot welcomes new listeners with a crash course in all things cosmic, Scandinavian, and folk. “Cosmic Norse Americana” is just what it sounds like, and provides a peek into their past discography, right from their very first single, ‘Flatfoot Willie’. Other standouts from their back catalogue include the dusty, Eagles-inspired ‘Dolphins Hotel’ and 2019’s ‘Changing Times’. “Things are happening fast, and I didn’t see us down this path“, lead singer Hogne Galåen muses. It’s funny how fitting that sentiment would become for the band.
Is it too early to release a compilation album? Most of us might picture staples like “ABBA Gold” or Bob Marley’s “Legend” as examples that really enlightened a new cohort of fans. And in the streaming era of music, a record that filters out the deep cuts for the crowd pleasers might be relatively obsolete. Yet despite this, Sugarfoot ventures to reintroduce themselves as they take to a bigger stage. With a new cover of ‘Time Will Show The Wiser’, written by Emmit Rhodes for the oft-overlooked psychedelic rock band The Merry-Go-Round, Sugarfoot dig into their roots and stick to an older, more mythical sound, one that has surely been rewarded.
