In between albums, Bayside felt prefer it ought to “nonetheless spend that point doing one thing productive.” The result’s Acoustic Volume 2, a set of 10 favorites and deep tracks achieved in, because the title suggests, an unplugged trend, with a lone new tune “It Don’t Exist.” But frontman Anthony Raneri tells Billboard that the set — whose model of “Sick Sick Sick” premieres solely under — is greater than a mere sequel to the 2006 EP Acoustic.
“Much extra so than (Acoustic), we actually needed to attempt to reimagine these songs,” Raneri explains. “We determined that nothing has to be on this report. Let’s fiddle with a bunch of our songs all through the catalog. If one thing sounds cool, it is on the report, even when it is not the preferred songs. That was one of many guidelines we set for ourselves.” Raneri additionally acknowledges some “self-importance” in Bayside’s strategy this time. “We needed this report to say, ‘Look what we will do. We’re not simply an aggressive punk band. We can take away the pace, take away the aggression, take away the amount and nonetheless play and sound actually good.'”
Some of Acoustic Volume 2‘s songs have by no means been performed reside earlier than by Bayside, actually — together with “Howard” and “I Think I’ll Be OK,” in accordance with Raneri. And most have been handled with new approaches and flavors markedly totally different than the unique studio variations. “‘Howard’ might be the most important departure from its unique,” Raneri says. “We went into a method we do not fiddle with a lot, a type of reggae, islandy factor. And on ‘Sick Sick Sick’ we put a shuffle in there, which is a fairly important musical change to make to a tune that wasn’t written with a shuffle in it.
“We assume these are nice songs at their core and perhaps we missed the mark on them the primary time,” Raneri provides. “What if we have been to interrupt them again down and take the chords and melody and lyrics and gown them up in a different way? Maybe someone would hear one thing totally different they usually’ll get a second probability.”
To complement Acoustic Volume 2, which comes out Sept. 28, Bayside is setting off on an acoustic tour on Nov. 24 of small, intimate rooms that rolls into February. The group is bolstering its instrumentation with an auxiliary piano participant and percussionist, and Raneri guarantees a few of Bayside’s different materials will get the identical type of “reimagining” because the Acoustic Volume 2 tracks. “It’s not gonna be simply enjoying our songs on acoustic guitars,” he says. “For individuals who have seen us 30 and 40 instances, it is gonna be one thing they’ve by no means seen earlier than.”
The subsequent order of enterprise, in the meantime, would be the subsequent commonplace Bayside album, following up 2016’s Vacancy. Writing has already begun for a hoped-for 2019 launch, and Raneri predicts “what we predict the followers need subsequent. I’m feeling prefer it’ll be the toughest, heaviest most aggressive album we have ever made. I would not name (Vacancy) our softest report, but it surely wasn’t on the aggressive aspect, actually. So after that and this acoustic report, I believe we’re doing one thing actually heavy for certain.”
