The Early Sixes are an alternative rock / indie-alt-pop band with a unique electronic-folk sound from Chicago. After releasing their debut album I Want That for You in 2018, the band is back with their sophomore album Navigate. Partnering with Grammy-nominated producer Rob Kleiner (Sia, David Guetta, The Weeknd), the 10-track LP features a sound evolved from their acoustic-driven folk-pop roots and centered around electric guitar, cello, keys, bass, drums and electronic beats. Navigate, due out October 9, 2020, features four singles preceding the full-length release in Chase the Sun (Sept. 4), I’m Sorry (Sept. 18), Saved You (Sept. 25), and the title-track, Navigate (Oct. 2).

Navigate was recorded, produced, mixed, and mastered during the quarantine stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic – all without the band ever seeing each other face to face (vis-a-vis The Postal Service’s time-tested Give Up record from 2003). The record was written collaboratively in text chains, video chats, and voice memos spanning coasts and time zones from the winter of 2019 to the summer of 2020. While on the surface, this approach could be seen as limiting, it actually freed the band to explore new approaches to song construction that time, instrumentation, or the performance-based constraints of a rehearsal room could have otherwise limited. The recording process on Navigate came to life layer-by-layer, allowing each member to truly put their own unique stamp on every track and unlock new pieces to the puzzle - new pathways for the next contributor to explore. As a result, the band strayed (sometimes quite far) from the acoustic-centered approach of their debut album. These new boundaries, or lack thereof, are exemplified in tracks like I’m Sorry and Brand New Eyes, which showcase new uses of piano, synthesizers, electronic drums, and blends of various musical genres.

While lyrically the tracks on Navigate were not initially conceived around a central theme, many naturally began to converge around recurring thematic elements. Tracks like If We Can and Recover both share a similar rock, electric guitar-driven sound. But also, these tracks share similar thematic concepts of perseverance in the pursuit resolution; perhaps inspired by the surreal time the songs were conceived during the spring of 2020 as lockdown began. More hopeful tracks like Chase the Sun and Home explore the concepts of distance, uncertainty, contentment found in the people close to you, and moving away but never moving on. Ballads like We Were Invincible and The Way You Deserve to Be Loved evoke nostalgia – the former in lyrical content and the latter in musical inspiration from classic ballads of the 1960s. The bookends of the album – Navigate and Saved You – truly push the band’s song construction to new levels, striving to convey the epic scope and weight of the subject matter contained within the lyrics.

The album title Navigate truly became a natural fit for this release as, pandemic aside, it comes on the heels of many band members leaving the Chicago area and moving (in some instances) to entirely different coasts. The concepts of ‘distance’ and ‘finding a new way’ certainly loomed large over the development of this release as the band themselves navigated the process of producing an album in a whole new way, all the while also adjusting to their own new locations and situations.

The Early Sixes songwriting unapologetically draws inspiration from the band’s personal experiences, an approach that comes naturally for the band to explore without pretense. Although the The Early Sixes officially formed in Chicago in 2012, the friendships that forged the band spans decades.

The Early Sixes are Matt Charoenrath (vocals, guitar, piano), Dan Zuba (guitar), Sam Zuba (bass, drums, vocals), and Nate Meyer (cello).

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