Биография

With ORPHAN, Empires climb to rare heights. Their vivid rock ‘n’ roll is now fused with an imaginative and open-armed approach. Born of singer Sean Van Vleet’s fascination with contemporary popcraft, songs like “Please Don’t Tell My Lover” and the night-driving “How Good Does It Feel” see the Chicago-based band adopting time-honored romantic idioms, both musical and lyrical, to mask deeper and darker personal truths. Van Vleet put pen to paper and began to write in a wholly free space, with no expectations or endgame in mind. While prior Empires recordings had been produced, engineered, and mixed by Steger, the band agreed the time had come to see what an outside influence might bring to the table and in September 2013, traveled to Dallas for three weeks of sessions with producer John Congleton and proved the ideal midwife for Empires’ aesthetic rebirth, assisting them as they shed deeply rooted means of expression. “John took ideas that we thought were golden and threw them away,” Van Vleet says. Stripping Empires’ already expansive sound to its essence exposed far more range and emotional heft to songs like “Lifers” and the cutting “Hostage” – the guitars sound richer and atmospheric, the rhythms subtle and fluid yet more powerful at the same time. ORPHAN serves a forward-thinking landmark as Empires continue to grow and venture towards unprecedented terrain.