Album Notes

“...a moody conglomerate of emotions embodied by lurid drones and pensive stillness, swirls of sonic texture and eerie atmospherics, and entrancing, disorienting repetition interrupted by robust, vibrant crescendos.”
~ Jacob Price, Delusions of Adequacy

The Sad Sea is the long-awaited new album from the Texas post-rock band: Hotel Hotel. P. D. Wilder & Patrick Patterson were already playing together in CAN(d/t)A when they met a wild-eyed intense young drummer while out on tour back in 2005. Soon they found themselves recording what would become Hotel Hotel's first album allheroesareforeverbold. The new group took to the road & began touring the USA & the UK extensively, securing a contract with Silber Records. In spring 2007 the drummer, the real force & mastermind behind the formation of the band, disappeared at LaGuardia Airport on April 11, 2007; not having been seen since. Just when things were starting to roll along it all came to a halt. There would be year long derailment before the band could be rebuilt.
So the remains of the band were sitting in Austin on an unusually cold night, drinking in an out of the way dive bar wondering what to do about the band, about drummers, & about life in general when a guy turns to them in full sea captain attire, beard & all, the spitting image of Zach Galifianakis, & proceeds to tell them about an expedition he’d been working on for years to find the ghost ship the “Marie Celeste,” admitting that the 2001 find wasn’t the real thing & that they should sign up for all the adventure & glory to be had. The Sad Sea is the tale of this fateful voyage from Galveston, Texas to the coast of Haiti during the thick of hurricane season. A tale of madness & hope, of love & loss, of despair & regret, of post rock & indie ambient.
The Sad Sea engulfs you like the ocean during a brutal storm. You can smell the salt water, for it almost suffocates you. The distress you feel is real, a sinking ship in the middle of nowhere after being out to sea for days upon endless days mounting into such longing…through dusk laid to rest by the settling fog & drifting across the ocean; a motionless body of crystal & glass frozen. The compass is broken. The sea swallows any wanting. Lay down in the sea & home is where you will be.