Ohtis announce debut album, revisit dark memories with balmy lead track "Rehab"

We've already heard two other singles from country trio Ohtis. They first bounced on the scene last year with their tender debut "Runnin", and soon followed it up with the flamenco-tinged "Settling".

Ahead of their debut London show tomorrow night for our Five Day Forecast, the three-piece have announced their debut album Curve of Earth with their most vibrant-melodied country number to date, "Rehab".

Offering the story behind the track, vocalist Sam Swinson explains, ""Rehab" was a fox hole prayer, a lot of the songs on the record were. I grew up in an American Christian church that believes in a Santa Claus God, always saying please do this or that, please give us this or that. So naturally when I was hating myself for being a hopeless junkie fuck up I went begging him to make me good. When I did it was usually slightly tongue in cheek, because I hadn’t believed in Santa Claus for a long time and I had been listening to the Louvin Brothers a lot so I understood the value of Old Testament irony. I wrote it at my friend Jimmy’s house in South Carolina. He’d bought me a bus ticket to come from Stone Mountain Georgia where I’d spent a few days sleeping under a bridge, begging people at Subway for change to get drunk on Steel Reserve. I was stranded there after being kicked out of a type of Christian work camp called Teen Challenge which operates under the guise of being a treatment center. They had me digging graves at a grave yard 12 hours a day everyday except Sundays, which was reserved for letting the lord do his work on us. I ended up drunk driving Jimmy’s truck into a ditch and he sent me on my merry way. Needless to say I was feeling very bad about myself which produced this emo country song."

Expanding on his hopes for their album, Swinson explains, “I would hope it’s helpful for people. The conversation about addiction, it’s like any other mental illness society tends to sweep under the rug. Talking openly about it allows people who haven’t been exposed to recovery at all, who are still afraid and in denial and worried about the stigma, to transcend the shame keeping us sick.”