Photo by Brooke Hall
The experience of growing up with a father from East Tennessee, and later settling West of Nashville as a teenager, fostered a certain attitude about Americana music. For years I’d associated country music with the over produced, mass marketed pop being hammered out in Music City and thought of authentic folk and mountain music as something that only lived in the past. After several years of rediscovering folk and bluegrass here on the East Coast, I’m still pleased to find that authentic traditional American music is still being made.
I first found Sea Couch at the Hamilton Arts Collective at the launch of Loveasaurus Records, a collective record label whose members are an impressive group of individuals making great music in Baltimore. My first impression of the duo and their music was that what I was experiencing was wholly authentic. This is the music of gifted storytellers that have a knack for creating an atmosphere just close enough to your own life experience to lull you into into tender daydreams where your past and imagination mingle and rework familiar history.
The first full album from the duo, Satellites, is a collection of bitter sweet ballads set against the backdrop of post-industrial America, or more specifically post-industrial Maryland. It’s nostalgia built on narrative that resonates. The songs are full of references to places that locals have either been to or have heard about and they’re infused with emotions that most people I know experience on a regular basis. There is an accounting for culture here that makes Satellites more than just a collection of songs. It’s a testament to the experience of the songwriters and the people who have touched their lives. Though if I’m wrong and the stories told here are fictional, they certainly feel genuine and intimate. And in the end, maybe that’s what’s important. The fact that this is music that you can feel. At least, that’s the way I hear it.
Listen to and buy the album here.
Photos by Matt House
