Currently on the road together, Companion commemorates their tour with Evangelicals by premiering a cover of their song, “Bloodstream”. Singer Pepi Ginsberg combines powers with cohorts Kirk Schoenherr, Anna Thorngate, Amy Carrigan (both of the Brooklyn Ladies Choir), and Tim Lappin, as they get evangelical with a song that traces odd Biblical encounters and hemopoietic side-effects from Christ visions that course throughout their constitutions. Unleashing bold guitars, Companion pumps sound and feeling like a gnostic heart supporting Pepi's passionate vocals that pit reflections of sainthood, vanity with the sermons and sights of a celestial deity of great religious sovereignty.
Pepi's voice explores the internalization of spiritual teachings and feelings in the titular lines, “I can feel you running through my bloodstream”. Companion's translation of Evangelicals' original turns up the fidelity and trades the sleep laden made-at-home style security blanket for a main stage overhaul. The former comforter-tent quality is rearranged in earnest, where the barely conscious “visions of Christ” happenstance are explored in a clearer and dearer light.
The song cover works in ways where either band could claim their own right of ownership. In passages where Ginsberg's recites lyrics like, “Choke holding and someone's still smoking, ignoring the buried alive, dying high off carbon dioxide”, it feels like a song that could have made it on the debut Companion self-titled. The revelatory presences of Christ are wrapped in the bright clear guitar strums, as the Christian deity appears in dreams and in the woods to deliver proverbs like “faith is a form of sight”, and “reflection is vanity” between visions. Through both groups latter day parable styles; they take their religious iconography and imagery on a shared mission to preach the secular and non-secular facets that compose their collective beings.
We also have the Jeff Wenzel music video of “Bloodstream”, showcasing live Companion performances and sleepy late night drives where you're seeing double, and all illuminated road signs and infrastructures appear scattered like the image fragments in a kaleidoscope. From Pepi and the band on stage beneath the lights to the train stream of subway lamps and rays reflecting bright from buildings and streets; the contrast of darkness and incadescence runs throughout the video like a motif of glowing cadences. Just like the religious fixations flowing in the cover of “Bloodstream”, Wenzel's visuals operate as system of veins that gives life to a host of lights filmed throughout the municipality of NYC.
Companion's self-titled is available now from the band and you can catch them playing the following dates with Evangelicals.
June
13 Philadelphia, PA – Kung Fu Necktie
14 Baltimore, MD – Golden West
15 Raleigh, NC – Kings Barcade
16 Charlotte, NC – Tommy’s
18 Atlanta, GA – 529
19 Birmingham, AL – Bottle Tree
20 Little Rock, AR – Juanitas
21 Tulsa, OK – Fassler Hall
22 Lawrence, KS – Replay Lounge
24 Des Moines, IA – Vaudeville Mews
25 Milwaukee, WI – Mad Planet
26 Chicago, IL – Subterranean
27 Champaign, IL – MnM Bar
