Descended Like Vultures (Remastered 20th Anniversary Director's Cut) Rogue Wave

• 1 Vulture's Reprise 00:41
• 2 Bird on a Wire (2026 Remaster) 03:32
• 3 Catform (2026 Remaster) 03:10
• 4 Loves Lost Guarantee (2026 Remaster) 04:44
• 5 Salesman at the Day of the Parade (2026 Remaster) 02:36
• 6 My Will 03:30
• 7 Publish My Love (2026 Remaster) 03:52
• 8 Are You on My Side (2026 Remaster) 04:18
• 9 Vulture's Return 01:39
• 10 You (2026 Remaster) 05:44
• 11 Interruptions (2026 Remaster) 04:46
• 12 Medicine Ball (2026 Remaster) 01:54
• 13 10:1 (2026 Remaster) 03:16
• 14 California (2026 Remaster) 04:07
• 15 Vulture's Reprieve 00:53
• 16 Eyes (2026 Remaster) 02:29
• 17 Desperate (Demo) 02:42
• 18 Dropout (Demo) 02:29
• 19 When We Begin (Demo) 03:25
• 20 Debaser (Live in Bloomington 2006) 04:45
• Total Runtime 01:04:32

Info for Descended Like Vultures (Remastered 20th Anniversary Director's Cut)

Released in 2005, Descended Like Vultures is Rogue Wave’s second album for Sub Pop. It would be the first time the band’s leader made a record with a whole group – Rogue, Spurgeon, Le Bron, and new bass player Evan Farrell – in the studio. They spent 10 days with Bill Racine (who also produced Out Of The Shadow with Rogue) at Supernatural Sound in Oregon City, OR, resulting in the creation of 11 tracks that journey through a dreamy landscape inspired by several decades of classic rock and pop (from Fleetwood Mac to Neil Young to My Bloody Valentine.)

For the first time as an entire unit, Rogue Wave went out of its way to create a free-flowing album that includes equal amounts of tension, release and resolution. In the process, they made a brilliantly layered, expertly crafted album that changes shape with repeated spins.

Zach Rogue offers this on Out of the Shadow: “There’s an innocence and openness to this album, probably because I had literally no idea what I was doing. I made sketches of the songs on 4-track, and by and large, the structure of the songs didn’t change too much in the studio.

“Largely recorded under the cover of very late night at Bearsville because I didn’t have the money to officially record in a studio, I thought Bill and I were making better-sounding demos. But the more we tracked, the more it seemed like it could be a real album. While it felt like the most exciting thing that ever happened to me, I didn’t exactly think it would be heard by anyone except maybe my friends and family. When it was done, I used it as a way to recruit a band on Craigslist. I wish I could remember what I wrote in that posting.

“These 4-track demos are some other song ideas I was kicking around at the time. I’m really fond of the live version of that Neil Young song (“Wrecking Ball”) we did with the Helio Sequence. We got along so well with those guys and I loved it when Pat and Benjamin shared the drum kit. Controlled chaos.”

As for Descended Like Vultures, Zach Rogue had this to say, “This is the sound of a road weary but energized band. Once Rogue Wave started touring on Out of the Shadow, we seemingly never stopped. And when we weren’t touring, we were knocking out new song ideas at our rehearsal space in Oakland. Descended was recorded in two parts: Pat and I tracked a handful of songs with Bill (Racine) at Tarbox, where he was House Engineer. We were obsessed with the Flaming Lips and hoped we could through osmosis absorb some of that Dave Fridmann magic. All we wanted to do was experiment in the studio. Some nights I slept in the live room under the piano. The rest we did as a full band at Supernatural, just south of Portland, OR. When we first submitted the LP to Sub Pop, they said we needed to trim it down. This 20th Anniversary version is as we originally intended it, with weird autoharp pieces I wrote in the studio and some of the other songs we wanted in there.

“When I wrote and tracked “Eyes” at my house in Oakland, I demoed some other songs as well, which is where the demos for “Dropout” and “Desperate” come from. “When We Begin” is a song we were asked to submit for the Olympics, but the committee, in their wise judgement, rejected. We were asked to record a cover of the Pixies’ “Debaser” for the TV show The OC. After we finished that more rocking version, we stayed in the studio and tried playing it a different way live. It took us about a hundred takes to play it without messing it up, but we finally got it.”

Earlier this year, Rogue Wave’s “Eyes,” which is included here with the bonus material for Descended Like Vultures, was certified as a Gold-selling single by the RIAA.

“Rogue’s high, gentle vocals and halcyon harmonies mask lyrics that are occasionally dark and cynical–but never mushy.” [Descended Like Vultures] A-, Entertainment Weekly

“One of the year’s best.” [Descended Like Vultures] Billboard

“A perfect mix of tender melodies and rock and roll.” [Descended Like Vultures] 8/10, Under the Radar

“a more visceral, immediate effort.” [Descended Like Vultures] 7.8/10, Pitchfork

“…a musical ambition that flirts with the experimental, but remains joyously within reach of the FM dial.” [Descended Like Vultures] 8/10, Uncut

Rogue Wave

Digitally remastered

Please Note: We offer this album in its native sampling rate of 48kHz, 24-bit. The provided 96kHz version was up-sampled and offers no audible value!

Rogue Wave
Over the decade and a half that Rogue Wave has made music, Zach Rogue has continued to expand his band’s emotional spectrum. Drawing inspiration from the inevitable delusions of everyday American life, Rogue, his longtime bandmate Pat Spurgeon, and their fellow members have returned reinvigorated, and with a fresh sound founded on the art of patience, the fearlessness of experimenting, and the unbridled joy of creating something meaningful to help us navigate through these vacant times. Trusting in its own abilities and leaning on each other, Rogue Wave has seized creative control of its identity and sound and is set to smash any preconceptions of its music, revealing the most truthful, powerful, and urgent sonic blueprint of the band to date.

“I wanted the duality, he says, “I wanted the thematic conflict. This is a record of things being out of balance and at odds with one another.”

Taking a longer break in between albums than ever before, Rogue enjoyed his extra time off at home in Oakland with his children. The songwriting process for Rogue Wave’s music is always the same—“me, alone in a room,” as Rogue says—and this time around, he found the most success at home in his bedroom or while driving in his car, even learning to embrace his two-year-old son’s “experimental tunings” on his beloved Taylor guitar. Lyrics, however, did not come as easy, and Rogue only found success with his words when slowing himself down and recognizing that his wild juxtapositions of lyrical themes actually felt right. “I wanted the duality,” he says, “I wanted the thematic conflict. This is a record of things being out of balance and at odds with one another.” Thematically, Rogue Wave’s music has never drifted too far from the subject matter of emotional battles with fear and joy in equal parts.

Choosing to title the record Delusions of Grand Fur, a riff on the tendency of fresh-faced musicians to misperceive the reality of band life, Rogue found himself reflecting on all that he had learned through his time in Rogue Wave, in addition to our need as humans to keep up appearances. “You think the world will be your oyster and the wounds you were running away from when you joined a band will magically go away—you think you can just become someone else or get whatever you want,” he says. “But really, we are all deluded in some way. We need to delude ourselves to deal with the impossibility and difficulty of life. Delusion is what keeps the mythology of America alive. It keeps us from facing our history and our true selves. We don’t want to be deluded. We need it.” And once he had convinced Spurgeon of the sincere intent behind the titular pun, they began the recording process.

“We wanted to just go with our own instincts and trust ourselves. Pat really blossomed as an engineer during this record. His curiosity in the studio is just endless. There are no rules. And that’s why I’ve always been so comfortable bringing song ideas to him, because he is so open.”

Rogue and Spurgeon decided to work without a producer, instead recording and producing themselves at their home studio in Oakland. Calling to mind the band’s debut, 2003’s Out of the Shadow, a project in which song arrangements were done entirely on the fly, the band decided to work without recording demo versions of the songs – instead, the demos would simply become the songs. Setting up shop amongst their large collection of well-loved gear at the place they felt most comfortable, the band was free to experiment at will—rarely would they rehearse a song as a band first, instead choosing to tinker and jump off the deep end as Rogue and Spurgeon desired, blessing the process with what seemed like a natural evolution. At times, bassist Mark Masanori Christianson and the band’s new guitar player Jon Monohan would come by to throw in some ideas. But by and large the architects remained Rogue and Spurgeon, resulting in a revelatory experience and so many songs the band could have potentially released a double album. The process taught them to trust their instincts while embracing the fleeting energy of an imaginative spark.

“It was really nice working at our own pace,” says Rogue. “We wanted to just go with our own instincts and trust ourselves. Pat really blossomed as an engineer during this record. His curiosity in the studio is just endless. There are no rules. And that’s why I’ve always been so comfortable bringing song ideas to him, because he is so open.” Spurgeon played all the drums on the record, as well as a bit of everything else. In Rogue’s words, even Spurgeon’s experiments became instruments all of their own, and despite the modest environment and DIY approach, the end result is a clearer snapshot of who Rogue Wave is today.

“Overall, I think we have grown more comfortable in our own skin,” say Rogue. “We had total control; we were on our own little island and made the record entirely for our own amusement. As a result, there are some pretty experimental tendencies. It is pretty immersive. There are some very emotional moments. But my relationship with Pat continues to grow. In many ways, I feel like we are just starting to figure out how we like to record music. This record was the most challenging album we’ve ever worked on, but it never felt like a slog. When we are working on songs together, it just never feels old.”

This album contains no booklet.