Rose of the West singer Gina Barrington says that for years she’s had a distinct vision for the band’s sound, a shadowy hybrid of trip-hop, dream-pop and shoegaze that doesn’t play by the strict conventions of any given style. But converting the music that’s in your head to tape is never easy, and it’s even harder still when it requires the right people to help you materialize it.
Barrington said an early version of the band, then called Nightgown, fizzled out after clashes over creative control. “It wasn’t true to the music,” she says of the project. “There were a lot of hands that were trying to take over and create the sound, when I felt like it was already there but nobody wanted to listen to me.” That was just the first of a series of false starts for the band that would become Rose of the West, as Barrington spent several years rotating through different lineups that didn’t pan out for a variety of personal or creative reasons.
Eventually, Barrington says, the pieces fell into place and she found a lineup that worked: guitarist/synth player Thomas Gilbert, formerly of GGOOLLDD; bassist Cedric LeMoyne, a veteran touring musician who’s played with Remy Zero and Alanis Morissette; keyboardist Erin Wolf, of Hello Death; and drummer Dave Power, of The Staves. For Rose of the West’s self-titled debut album, that seasoned crew helped flesh out and expand on the songs and loops that Barrington was constructing on her own and turn them into music as voluptuous and immersive as Barrington’s voice.
“Everything came pretty close to what I imagined, but it’s also just much more than I ever expected,” Barrington says. “Listening to it I’m very happy. I never imagined everything sounding as lush and beautiful as it does.”
Cast in the nocturnal glamour of goth touchstones like Echo and the Bunnymen and The Cure, the band’s widescreen sound helps take the sting out of songs that Barrington admits aren’t always an easy listen. “About 50% of them were written some years back when I was going through personal things,” Barrington says. “I don’t write the happiest songs. I write for people who are looking to feel some kind of happiness or be fulfilled in their sadness. And the second half of them were written at a time when I was really going through some hard stuff. I was losing the matriarch of my family and my husband lost his brother to an overdose, so we were dealing with a lot of big, huge life stuff. And I tend to bring that into whatever I’m writing, even if I don’t think about it consciously.”
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The pervasive mournfulness of Rose of the West’s music helped the band land a prominent placement last year in “You,” the buzzy thriller that Netflix rescued from obscurity on Lifetime. The program used the band’s debut single “Hunter’s Will” during a pivotal scene where (spoilers) the show’s antagonist stalker chases down and viciously attacks another character as she jogs through Central Park, seemingly killing her—a dramatic moment that called for a fittingly dramatic song.
“That was great for us, because it gave us some awareness right before this record was being finished,” Barrington says. “That show came out right at the right time when we were starting to let people know what our plans as a band were. That song isn’t on the record but it’s opened a lot of people’s eyes to us.”
Rose of the West play an album release show Saturday, April 6, at Mad Planet at 8 p.m. with openers Cashfire Sunset and a DJ set from Warpaint’s Jenny Lee. The band will also play an in-store at the Exclusive Company at 1669 N. Farwell Ave. on Friday, April 5, at 7 p.m.
