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Mt. Lebanon musician’s band delivers debut EP

By Harry Funk staff Writer hfunk@thealmanac.Net 3 min read
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After all these decades, high praise for a recording still is saying that it sounds great through headphones.

So strap ’em on for “Reverie,” the debut EP by The Local, Mt. Lebanon resident Ben Sweet’s latest musical project.

From left are Jenny Reilly, Ben Sweet and Dean Henry

“We challenged ourselves to go big with the sound,” he said. “Sometimes, you sort of pull the throttle back a little bit. But we went for it.”

The result is a treat for the ears, with Sweet and longtime collaborator Dean Henry coming up with eight original songs that producer Brian McTear brought to sonic fruition at his Miner Street Recordings in Philadelphia.

“He sort of got it, right from the beginning,” Sweet said about McTear’s grasp of his and Henry’s ideas. “He’s the one who coined the phrase ‘Ennio Morricone meets My Bloody Valentine.’ The first email we sent him, that was his response. He already had arrangement ideas and everything from the beginning. So that was just a great partnership.”

Morricone, the venerable Italian composer best known for his Western-themed scores, and the aforementioned Irish rock band make for an interesting combination. But it’s one that The Local pulls off effectively, especially with songs like “Fight Today” that are reminiscent of, say, the soundtrack from “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”

Reverie cover

The title of that song and others on “Reverie” – “Fair Play,” “Run” and “Impatience Blues,” for example – are indicative of the mood that was prevalent during the album’s recording.

“The anxiety that you hear on the record and some of the tension that’s in the songs reflects a lot of what was going on during the time those songs were written, which was the fall of 2016,” Sweet explained. “We want it to sort of capture the feeling that was in the air at the time, and we hope that it did.”

Also participating in the sessions for “Reverie” were bass player Jenny Reilly, Dean’s wife, along with studio musicians. Since then, The Local’s lineup has coalesced with Eric Matlock on keyboards and Clay Hoover on drums.

Henry was the drummer for another of Sweet’s project’s, Southside American.

“At one point, Dean stepped from behind the drum kit, picked up the guitar and began writing songs of his own,” Sweet said. “Dean’s approach to music is very rhythmic, even the lyrics, whereas I come at it from a different angle, more of the folk-Americana storytelling perspective. We wanted to marry what we kind of called the ‘black and the brown,’ so to speak, into a cohesive sound.”

Ben Sweet

As such, they work closely together in crafting their material, with the song “Racing” as an example.

“That was a song I wrote at my kitchen table in about 10 minutes, and it was just a folk song,” Sweet recalled. “Again, this is where Dean’s genius comes in. Where that song took off, in my mind, was when he arranged it. We changed the percussion, and it became more of like a bumpin’-along shuffle that you tap your feet to.”

The collaboration works just as effectively on other tracks, which suits Sweet just fine.

“There’s no way these songs would sound the way they do if either one of us finished this record himself.”

For more information, visit thelocal412.com.

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