Songwriter Shane Rennison Releases NICE TO MEET YOU EP

Indie-pop songwriter Shane Rennison's Nice To Meet You EP is an earnest five-track collection of songs that feel like a peek into Rennison's wide-open heart and his beloved home in the Catskill Mountains of New York. That's where he made many of the memories that fuel his music, which recalls the craftsmanship of The 1975, the sugary synth highs of Passion Pit and the effortless pop prowess of Harry Styles.  

“It's just such a beautiful place. I can just take my guitar and go into the woods and hear nothing but birds,” Rennison said. “You can hear yourself think. You can feel yourself breathe. You're more present. It's home.”   Rennison made Nice To Meet You with Julian Giaimo, a talented composer and audio engineer who produced the EP and played all instruments except Rennison's piano parts. Together, the two turned out songs like lead single “Cold Winter,” a slice of sparkling synth-pop and nostalgia that finds Rennison reapproaching an old flame with newfound maturity and perspective, and second single “Ghost,” which incorporates rubbery funk elements and simmers with frustration about a dying relationship.   “That's about trying to deal with the emotions when a person you really cared about all of a sudden starts treating you differently,” Rennison said. “After all this time, they're looking right through you.”  

Elsewhere, “Another Chance” is both a lament for the girl that got away and an earworm made of undulating keyboard melodies and reggaeton rhythms. “Drunk” centers around feelings of insecurity and pulls the curtain back on Rennison's ‘90s rock influences. And “Temptations” rounds out the EP with a feel-good story built on major chords and a syncopated beat that'll transport you directly to a tropical island.  

“I wanted the whole EP to have this melancholic back-and-forth feeling to reflect my experiences,” Rennison said. “But then ‘Temptations' comes in and reminds you that, hey … we're still happy to be alive.” 

Happy to be alive, and happy to be back in the Catskills, where Rennison grew up in a family with its own kettle corn business. He went to college in Florida, but dropped out after studying abroad in Paris and realizing he was heading down the wrong path toward a career in business and finance.  

“I stepped away from my reality at the time and just woke up every day in a foreign place and said, ‘What do I want to do today?'” he said. “And then I went and did it. And it showed me that that's possible, and I started thinking, ‘Why can't I do this back home? Why can't I have this same energy and inspiration and fire back in the States?' That set me on my way.”  

Which leads us to Nice To Meet You and the follow-up full-length album, which Rennison and Giaimo are working on now, with hopes for a 2024 release.   

“The music we're making is reflecting the work I've been putting in the past few years,” Rennison said. “Because I'm self-taught and I haven't been doing this that long, there's just so much growth happening, and it's really exciting to think about what the future holds. I feel like I'm still at the ground level of what I'm trying to do, so it's all up from here.”

Show Dates:   

Sept 29: Roscoe Beer Co. 5pm-8pm
Oct 6: 17 West Brewery 6pm-9pm
Oct 13: Bethel Woods Peace, Love & Pumpkins 7pm-9pm
Oct 14: Russian Mule Brewery 4pm-7pm
Oct 15: Roscoe Beer Co. 1pm-4pm
Oct 15: Santorini Mix Grill 5:30pm-8:30pm
Oct 20: Seminary Hill 4pm-7pm
Oct 27: Roscoe Beer Co. 5pm-8pm
Nov 4: Russian Mule Brewery 4pm-7pm
Nov 10: Seminary Hill 4pm-7pm
Dec 2: Russian Mule Brewery 4pm-7pm
Dec 27: Windham Mountain Private Club 2pm-5pm

Listen to the EP here:

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