CD, vinyl and all digital formats. It features eleven new songs, of which three are re-recordings of songs from their previous album. Beforehand, the band released three songs from the new album as singles: "Really Great", "Stars" and the title track "Steadman's Wake". Influences and sound From the beginning of the group, Mike Connell wrote both the music and the lyrics of the majority of the band's songs, although he was not the band's primary lead singer. Connell's influences included the 1960s guitar pop of his childhood, including The Byrds and The Beatles; in an early interview, he stated that the first song he wrote as a teenager was titled "Psychedelic Butterfly". Connell and other members of the Connells band were also influenced by then-contemporary British bands such as The Smiths and Echo & the Bunnymen. Another, more idiosyncratic, influence was the British progressive rock band Jethro Tull, whose song "Living in the Past" was covered by the Connells on 1995's New Boy EP. Like Peter Buck of R.E.M. and Johnny Marr of The Smiths, Connell and Huntley played Rickenbacker guitars for the first several years of the band's career, creating a jangly, folk-rock sound reminiscent of The Byrds and other Southern U.S. and North Carolina bands of the era, such as the dB's and Let's Active. Although the Connells were frequently dismissed as R.E.M. imitators due to the Athens, Georgia band's overwhelming popularity relative to that of its contemporaries, there were significant differences between the two bands. First of all, the Connells' influences occurred at the same time that R.E.M.'s influences occurred. Connell and Huntley both played twelve-string Rickenbackers, as opposed to the six-string models favored by R.E.M.'s Buck; this gave the Connells an even janglier sound. Whereas Buck's guitar style featured heavy use of arpeggios, Connell's style was primarily based on strummed open chords in the keys of G and D, with a strong Celtic feel to songs such as "Scotty's Lament" and "'74–'75". Likewise, Connell's lyrics were clearer and more direct than the stream-of-consciousness lyrics of Michael Stipe. The melancholy lyrics of early songs such as "Darker Days" drew comparisons to The Smiths, and an early feature on the band in the Raleigh's Spectator Magazine music weekly dubbed them "Raleigh's local depressants". And the band has a much more melodic bent than their forebears. Band members Current members David Connell – bass (1984–present) Mike Connell – guitars,