BACK TO THE ROOTS
Iration strips down songs and goes acoustic for latest album
Stripping down its more popular songs and returning some songs to their roots is what Iration set out to do on “Double Up.”
“Double Up,” is the first acoustic album for the reggae-rock group and features 10 of the band’s songs, but with an unplugged spin.
“I think the idea was to kind of take some of our more popular songs and do them acoustically and just start with the song, the original version of the song, just kind of playing the tempo and start over again and just kind of say, ‘OK, here’s the song; now let’s just try and record it, but let’s do it acoustic, let’s not put as much of emphasis on big drums and big synth sounds and big recordings, electric,’” said Micah Pueschel, singer and guitarist for Iration. “How do we highlight the song with the least amount and minimalist approach? And we took our five most popular songs and then we took kind of five songs that people maybe like, (such as) ‘Time Bomb’ and ‘Automatic’ that people didn’t get to hear the way the original song was written or the way that they were recorded came out a lot differently than the original version and we said, ‘We’ll give them another chance to hear these songs.’ Maybe it will give them a new appreciation for the other versions.”
“Double Up” also served as a placeholder between new albums for the band. Iration wanted to give “Hotting Up,” which was released in 2015, time to “seep in” and give it enough time before putting out another release. The band recently started the framework for its next album.
“We have a certain number of songs already recorded, and for the most part some of them are done,” Pueschel said. “We’re just waiting to finish the tour, and when we get off we can get in there and start getting back to work. The next ones we’re putting out, we’re all really excited about. It’s kind of that next step, as far as everything being put together. … I feel that it’s going to be another step up from even ‘Hotting Up’ and the last couple releases.”
Iration, which formed in 2004, continues to discover its sound.
“We’re still understanding what it is that we do, and I think people are too,” Pueschel said. “I think we’ve gotten a much better idea over the last two releases, with ‘Double Up’ and ‘Hotting Up’, that I think that we’re finally kind of hitting what it is, what our sound is, and where our kind of pocket and niche is in the music scene in general. I think that we’re figuring it out, and we’re lucky enough that our fans have stayed with us through the whole thing and said, ‘We trust you guys.’ ... We’re just lucky. We always bank on the fact that as long as we keep making good songs people will like it no matter what their genre or their style is. I feel Iration fans are very open to different sounds and different styles, and that’s a good thing.”