Album Notes

Well into the twenty-first century, the Pacific Northwestern area still produces some of the best music in the country. The early alternative rock movement in the very early 1990s jammed the region’s first stake into the soil, claiming the sister cities of Seattle and Portland as fertile grounds for new music. Stepping forward with a fresh foot is Saturna, a four-piece that was founded in Portland but now divides its residence between Oregon and Seattle. The debut LP, Some Delicious Enemy, takes the atmospheric beauty of their first EP, ...All Night, to the next level. In Portland, the legendary Tony Lash (Dandy Warhols, Stars of Track and Field, Elliott Smith) mixed “Pop Rocks,” making Saturna’s first radio track from last year’s …All Night a new demon, with a cleaner sound that expands every band member’s talent to fill every inch of sonic space. Back in Seattle, Brin Addison (Smashing Pumpkins, Chris Cornell) mixed the capacious "Much More" and electro-rocker "Fall."

Basement production and multi-instrumentalists may appear often in modern indie rock bands, but Saturna contains years of roadie, tech, and engineering experience, as well as music journalism and computer programming – important perspectives not often found from under the stage lights. With Eric Block on lead guitar, Ryan Carroll lends bass and guitar along with his ethereal vocals. Though Steve-O had a heavy hand in their EP’s production, many more names have taken part in the production of Some Delicious Enemy. Steve’s cuts still provides a variety of the band’s instrumentation, and his style fits well with Saturna’s newest member – drummer Matt Badger. The youngest in the now-quartet, his love for songwriting that’s less predictable – “songs that gave you the feeling that the artist toiled and agonized over how the final product would represent their ideas” – was the missing puzzle piece. Now complete, Saturna’s sound has the fullness its past efforts have always implied.

With their last EP, Saturna received endless praise on an international level. Featured on a whole slew of podcasts and blogs, their music appeared on MTV’s Bam’s Unholy Union, played on KEXP, and can be found on the Weathered Underground soundtrack – an interactive film that features some of the best underground talent, including The Blakes, Sirens Sister, and The Lashes. The epic “Roll Down” opens Some Delicious Enemy, leading into the whirlwind of “Fall” before launching into “Pop Rocks” within the first 15 minutes of the record. Spanning across 45 short-but-sweet minutes, Saturna refreshes the meaning of what “next big thing” was always supposed to sound like.