Eastwood, the indie rock side project from Knocked Loose guitarist Cole Crutchfield, has released their new album ‘It Never Gets Easy’ today via Pure Noise Records. The album features their previously released singles “False Start”, “Two Story Window” and “I (Don’t) Need You,” which have been featured on several editorial playlists and round ups with music sites like NPR, UPROXX, and Brooklyn Vegan. The 11-track project, written over a four-year time period, perfectly showcases the band’s diverse range of influences, from shoegaze to pop-punk, with even a little bit of country slide guitar thrown in for good measure.

The album starts off with a bang – a bang that is “Fair-Weather Friends.” The bold and brash track boasts a guitar heavy melody and an emotional strain in their voices. “False Start“, featuring Nathan Hardy, is the perfect indie end-of summer jam to blast as we bid farewell to the warmer days and head towards fall -singing, “Used to stay up and we’d talk / Now I stay up to see if you’ll call.” The track is accompanied by a fun and colorful music video, directed by Alex Constante. The video follows the band on a care-free summer day while they drive around, jam out in the woods, and take in the sunlight.

“Fine” highlights itself as an acoustic, emotionally driven ballad with a melancholy soundscape. With a dreamy, almost bedroom pop vibe and emotional lyrics – “I can’t read your mind but I wish you could read mine / It would say I could spend every day with you and be fine / I could spend every day with you and be fine / Overly rehashed, nostalgic conversations are getting bored / I wonder what truth would come out if you spoke with meaningful words.”

“Two Story Window” brings all the early 2000s pop-punk vibes, and is almost cinematic in its lyrics. With all their vocals melting together, it’ll be irresistible to sing along. “I (Don’t) Need You” brings an almost classic rock vibe, with even some jazzy elements woven in between the guitar solos. “Waves” culminates the album with an emotional soundscape that gives way to a powerful guitar section, which wonderfully supports their tantalizing vocals.

Cole Crutchfield, a talented vocalist and lyricist, created Eastwood with guitarist Scotty McElwain, bassist Zack Hay and drummer Devin Gnagie. The album is the latest step on the band’s ever-evolving journey, following 2017’s Past Ghost EP, a cover of Weezer’s “The World Has Turned And Left Me Here”, and an acoustic EP,  It Never Gets Easy marks the true beginning of Eastwood, and the first time Crutchfield has been truly happy with every aspect of a project’s end result.

“This is the first thing we’ve released that I’ve been proud to release,” he admits. “I also feel way more connected to these songs than anything else I’ve ever made. It’s the most important project I’ve ever done.”