Description
dBs founder, esteemed songwriter and Southern alt-pop godfather hits a creative high with intimate, expansive new set.
As a solo artist, producer, arranger, studio entrepreneur and founder of seminal indie combo the dBs, the North Carolina-bred singer/songwriter/guitarist has built a beloved and influential catalogue thats earned him the devotion of a far-ranging fan base and won him enduring status as a godfather to the Southern alternative pop community.
Lovesick Blues is Stameys first full-length release since A Question of Temperature, his 2005 collaboration with Yo La Tengo. The new album follows on the heels of Falling Off the Sky, the long-awaited, much-acclaimed reunion album of the dBs, as well as Stameys involvement as musical director and orchestrator for a series of all-star concert performances of Big Stars classic Third album in New York, London, Austin and Carrboro, NC.
While his prior work has established Stamey as an incisive songwriter, compelling performer and innovative sonic architect, Lovesick Blues finds the artist staking out some new songwriting territory, with inspired results. Such vividly forthright new tunes as Skin, London, Wintertime and I Wrote This Song for You deliver bittersweet, personal lyrics and inventive acoustic arrangements that employ strings, woodwinds and vocal harmonies to evoke the songs emotional landscapes. Those intimate numbers are balanced by more upbeat tunes like the vibrantly jangly Astronomy and the playful road-trip memoir You n Me n XTC.
Another highlight is the poignant late-night torch song Occasional Shivers, which Stamey first recorded as the B side of a limited-edition Christmas single in 1986. The albums musical and thematic centerpiece is the seven-minute Lovesick Blues, dedicated to the late North Carolina guitar great Sam Moss, and encompassing solitary late-night heartbreak, sweeping orchestral drama and redemptive uplift.
The resulting album is a landmark for Stamey, balancing his new songs unfiltered emotional honesty with the effortless melodic craft thats always been a hallmark of his work
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