Last fall, PopMatters premiered the music video “Bad Country” by the Virginia folk group the Last Bison. That song, a fine, sing-alongable number, is one of the key components of the convivial atmosphere that fills VA, the group’s most recent LP. PopMatters writer John Bergstrom asked in his review of the Last Bison’s Inheritance record, “The Virginia septet are legitimate players in the folk revival, so why aren’t they blanketing your radio like Mumford & Sons and the Lumineers?” The world has yet to give a sensible answer. The band’s music not only gives those mega-groups a run for their money; in many cases, particularly with Mumford & Sons, they actually one-up them.
As it turns out, the music of VA isn’t over just yet. These Virginians have now readied a followup EP, Dorado, taken from the writing and recording sessions from the last album.
Songwriter and vocalist Ben Hardesty explains to PopMatters the impetus for Dorado‘s release: “When deciding on songs for an album, there are always some that just don’t seem to fit, but that you still can’t let go of. After we released VA we still had this handful of songs that we felt strongly about and they seemed to work together well. The song ‘Dorado’ paints a picture of the Dorado fish jumping out of the sea and becoming the constellation that bears the same name. In a way, these songs sort of jumped out of the sea of our left over music, and ended up forming a great collection. So I guess you could say they’re like that fish, but they just smell better.”
Dorado EP is out on 3 March.