Sluice

Justin Morris moved to New York City in 2019 planning to quit music. After a childhood spent chasing indie rock, a stint selling merch on tour revealed the less romantic, workaday side of “the dream,” leaving him disillusioned. New York was meant to be a clean slate—until, less than a day into his Bushwick sublet, an armed robbery left him shaken and writing songs again. Those songs became Sluice. Now a four-piece from Durham, North Carolina, Sluice—Morris (guitar/vocals), Oliver Child-Lanning (bass), Avery Sullivan (drums), and Libby Rodenbough (fiddle)—make music rooted in sincerity, labor, and companionship. Their third album, Companion, follows 2023’s Radial Gate, written during a period of isolation, carpentry jobs, and uncertainty about whether music was still worth pursuing. Where that record lingered in loneliness, Companion moves forward with cautious hope. Recorded with producer Alli Rogers at Sylvan Esso’s Betty’s studio, Companion wrestles with belief, love, and commitment—both to other people and to music itself. The songs trace falling in love, returning friends, bandmates, dogs, reflections in bathroom mirrors, and the daily work that runs alongside art. In Morris’s plainspoken, deeply human style—once called “a re-education in sincerity”—Sluice finds meaning not in stardom, but in choosing to keep going, together.