HG's Northern Exposure series returns to showcase rising local and regional talent.

Want to be considered for a Northern Exposure date? Please send an email to promo@highergroundmusic.com for details.

Learn To Swim is a 5 peice band that formed in early 08. Influences include Modest Mouse, Cursive, and Radiohead. After about 6 months of writing they began playing as many shows as they could, and about 6 months after signed a deal with Boston indie label Driven Records. Their first full length album 'Creature Comfort' will be out in stores and on itunes late July!

"It’s hard to toss a quarter-inch cable in the greater Burlington music scene and not crack some grinning savant upside his chops. In fact, it might be the best way to start a band. Assembled from a select crop of surprisingly young area musicians, Stacked seems to grow taller by the day. As track after track materializes like a debut-LP-in-progress on this, the band’s Myspace page, “stacking” might be a better way to describe the group.

At the quartet’s core is Zack duPont. A guitar-slinger by trade, duPont has long earned his bread (with Japhy Ryder, W.E.S.T., and Hollywood Farm) in exchange for sweaty jazz licks and north-country soul. In Stacked, duPont stresses the latter while teasing the former. A few bars of “The Sand Will Wash Away” should be all anyone needs to understand that Zack is all about songcraft. With gorgeous vocal harmonies and Appalachian fingerpicking that tips into the realm of high-plains balladry, virtuosity here is a means toward more mature ends.

“Paths” shows duPont’s affinity for Leo Kottke while conjuring a sound akin to the early Slip. Taste through restraint is on display in “The Pilot,” which features the minimalist groovology of bassist Brian Wright and drummer Peter Negroponte. Filling out the mix are Peter Krag’s oblique flourishes on Rhodes. This is one that’s bound to split right open onstage.

Rather than ask what the oud is, or who Tim Sharbaugh is, you’d best listen to “Grey Day.” DuPont’s most pensive, Eastern-tinged composition finds the lineup towering ever taller with the help of Pat Melvin on bowed upright bass, and Josh Pfiel on percussion.

And so, it seems, the foundation has been poured and the scaffolding has been stripped away. With a forthcoming debut, and performances slated for Burlington’s upcoming Jazz Fest, Stacked is poised to become one of Burlington’s freshest, most-sophisticated new sounds amid a small metropolis of talent."

--Josh Potter, Contributing writer to Relix, State of Mind, and Jambase