“Nick Sanborn, Amelia Meath of Sylvan Esso and friends play DPAC” - Walter

Written By Amy Watt

Right after the release of their Grammy-nominated album, What Now, Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn of Sylvan Esso felt a little stagnant. Sanborn said they’d gotten too wrapped up in the minute details of production and “lost sight of the forest for the trees.”

“I think it’s easy, especially for a band like ours, to get lost in what the songs sound like instead of what they actually are,” Sanborn says. So they broke the songs all the way down. Instead of coasting on the success of the album, Meath and Sanborn took a group of musician friends out to the mountains to see what the electronic pop duo might sound like as a full band. And it worked. They ended up recording a few songs for the Echo Mountain Sessions, and Meath and Sanborn are about to hit the road for Sylvan Esso’s WITH tour, a short tour with a much bigger band, that will finish up in the Durham Performing Arts Center with performances November 22 and 23.

“It’s kind of this fun experiment of seeing what the band would sound like as a 10-piece instead of a two-piece,” Sandborn says.

Sanborn says that the songs won’t be unrecognizable, but he and Meath are very open to seeing what comes out of the upcoming rehearsals. “As far as we could stretch the songs, they still sounded like the songs,” he says. “I’m kind of curious myself to see how it goes.”

Sylvan Esso was born out of the same kind of adventurous collaboration. A few years ago, solo artist Meath thought it would be fun to see what Sanborn would do with one of her songs, and now, as the duo Sylvan Esso, they have two successful albums, a near-constant tour schedule and a Grammy nomination. Sanborn said they both believe that experimentation is crucial. 

“Collaboration is such an integral part of our lives,” Sanborn says. “We each feel restless if Sylvan Esso is the only thing that we’re doing, which informs the stuff that we’re doing together. So it’s this beautiful thing where everything is kind of cyclical.”

 
Amy Watt
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