Video: Foxtrails, ‘Upper 5’

Kevin Bronson on December 14th, 2021

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Foxtrails’ sophomore album, “Kaweah,” creeps up on you like fog descending on their Topanga Canyon home base, part folk music, part New Age-y ambient, full-on better for you than prescription chill pills.

The band has expanded to seven members since its self-titled debut album in 2018. Band leader Blake Mcleod is now accompanied by Michael Brenner, Cory Yamashiro, Dane Sandborg, Nikita Sorokin, Micah Sohl and Dylan Grombacher on an album that was started just as the pandemic hit and found its sweet spot in the town of Three Rivers in the foothills of the eastern Sierra Nevadas. The album draws its title from one of those rivers, “Kaweah.”

It’s a long-player that, for better or worse, stretches out, especially in its second half. The 6 1/2-minute track “Upper 5” counters more concise songs such as “Sundrip,” the first single. Brenner takes lead vocals on “Upper 5,” which wends its way through emotional topography with gentle harmonies, aching strings and glowing synths. ““Upper 5’ tells the story about the brotherhood of this band and the connection we feel to each other and this landscape,” Brenner says of the song, which sprung from a bass line by Sandborg. Michael Rollins did the video for the song.

The latest single from “Kaweah” (out on Friday) is “Dusk on the Walls,” a song written during quarantine about savoring every moment spent with friends and family. “This song is all about taking in with all of your senses — sights, smells and sounds,” the band says, “… a reflection to being fully immersed in a moment that you wish would last forever.”

Like waiting out the pandemic, “Kaweah” is best approached with patience. A certain equanimity might be your reward.

||| Watch: The video for “Upper 5”