The Getaway Drivers celebrate their 10th anniversary with a CD release show Oct. 10.
The Getaway Drivers’ new album evokes a sense of hope in the face of the knowledge that things sometimes deteriorate. Collectively, Bellatopia’s attitude is something like, “Sure, things are bleak, but maybe having everything fall apart wouldn’t be the worst thing.”
The Madison band will simultaneously celebrate their 10th anniversary and the CD release of Bellatopia, their fourth studio recording, at the Brink Lounge on Oct. 10. Getaway Drivers founder Bob Manor says Bellatopia is a bit of a departure sonically from their previous recordings.
“What we’ve been historically is acoustic guitar-driven Americana with electric guitar as an undercurrent,” says Manor. “On this record we switched to a little poppier style with a lot of piano and a lot more layering.”
The Getaway Drivers’ sound on Bellatopia is most clearly defined by the vocal harmonies of the husband-wife team of Manor and Sheila Shigley. When Shigley joined the band in 2006, they were only casual acquaintances. The pair bonded over the songwriting process, eventually getting hitched in 2012.
“For us, the record is a lament, in some ways, of loss,” Manor says. This is most evident in the fifth track, “Signs,” which is about seeing and hearing people you’ve lost in everyday things. The loss he was thinking about while writing the lyrics to “Signs” was of the band’s cellist, Steve Pingry, a popular local musician who died in 2011.
Bellatopia was recorded at Manor’s home studio and at DNA Music Labs on Winnebago Street, with DNA’s Brian Daly handling mixing and production duties. Daly also plays on a few of the tunes and will be sitting in with the band at the CD release party. The set will be structured chronologically, with former members guesting on tunes from the band’s earlier history, culminating in the current band playing the new album in its entirety.
