Artist: Anthony D'Amato
Album: The Shipwreck From The Shore
Bitrate: 248kbps avg
Quality: EAC Secure Mode / LAME 3.98.4 / -V0 / 44.100Khz
Label: New West
Genre: Rock
Size: 67.87 megs
PlayTime: 0h 36min 21sec total
Rip Date: 2015-01-09
Store Date: 2014-09-02
Track List:
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01. Was A Time 3:19
02. Back Back Back 3:49
03. Good And Ready 4:23
04. Ludlow 3:41
05. Hard To Say 3:29
06. If It Don't Work Out 3:03
07. Middle Ground 3:16
08. No Not Tonight 3:37
09. Cold Comfort 3:31
10. Calico, Alone 4:13
Release Notes:
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Sometimes the best music is like a photograph. Anthony DÆAmato's songs feel like
Polaroids, brushed with golden-hued vintage tones of heavy-hearted folk and
electric streaks of rock and roll. Like snapshots, they capture specific moments
in time, moments of enlightenment and resolution, elation and despair, darkness
and light. They're inextricably tied to the spaces in which they sparked to life
and reveal raw portraits of their subjects, unvarnished and intimate.
For his New West debut, The Shipwreck From The Shore, DÆAmato veered away from
the homemade DIY production style that marked his early work, a pair of
self-recorded albums cut in a Princeton University dorm room and a New York City
apartment that
NPR called "a modern folk gem" and Paste hailed as "unforgettable." In the fall
of 2013, he traveled to rural Maine to collaborate with a producer for the first
time, seeking out Sam Kassirer at the Great North Sound Society.
ôGreat North is this incredible 1700's farm house,ö DÆAmato says of the studio.
ôThereÆs no cell service, no internet, nothing to do but record and cook. And
they've recorded so many recent albums up there that I love like Josh Ritter,
Langhorne Slim, Lake Street Dive.ö
The isolation was a welcome moment of focus for DÆAmato, who lives in the
socially peripatetic environs of New York City. In Maine, he completed tracking
the album in just 11 days, a radical departure from his usual year-long
recording process.
ôUp to this point, I'd produced everything myself,ö he says. ôI recorded it all
with a single microphone in my bedroom and friends' apartments and mixed it on a
beat up old laptop, but I was ready to explore a new approach. Sam's always been
one of my favorite producers, so I jumped at the chance to work with him and
dove into it headfirst. I love the textures he creates, how he brings out so
many different shades of colors in all the arrangements."
The Revolution-era home made for an unusual recording process, too, where each
band member was often stationed in a different room of the house. ôWhen we were
tracking songs live as a band, I could be in the attic by myself, and the
drummer --Matt McCaughan from Bon Iver -- he was in the live room in the
adjacent carriage house. Brad Cook from Megafaun would be in the live room
playing bass with Matt, but he was wired up to an amp on the complete opposite
side of the main house. There weren't isolation booths, so we did isolation by
distance. And on top of that, Sam would be monitoring everything from the living
room, so he couldnÆt see any of us. We were all just connected by headphones and
microphones. It forced us to really listen deeply to each other because there
were no visual cues about where we were headed.ö
While the recording was physically dislocated, The Shipwreck From The Shore is a
wide-ranging but unified collection. "Captivating and catchy" (Refinery29)
opener ôWas a Time" is a barnburner propelled with raucous drums and a lonesome
harmonica slicing through layers of distorted analog keyboards. DÆAmato says,
ôIt started out as a folk song, but we decided to take it someplace a little
more punk, with a Pete Seeger meets Suicide vibe. Writing this song kind of felt
like the tumblers in a lock falling into ?lace, and once I finished it, the door
opened and a whole avalanche of others songs poured out in a very short period.ö
The soulful ôBack Back Backö blares with trumpets, shimmering tambourines, and
an Afro-beat guitar line, while DÆAmatoÆs voice climbs to the rafters in an
almost big-top gospel sound. ôMavis Staples has always been a huge influence,
and I wanted to write something that would live up to her endless positivity,"
he says. "It's a song about keeping your head up and moving forward at all
times.ö
Themes of hard times and heartbreak weave throughout the album, but DÆAmato
never wallows into melancholy. Instead he celebrates the catharsis of moving on,
"turn[ing] heartbreak into cheery folk," as SPIN puts it. ôIf it don't work out
/ you take the bed and I'll take the couchö he sings later on the album,
recounting the aftermath of a crumbled relationship. ôI don't think I've ever
written a more nakedly open and honest song,ö he reveals. "Sometimes the end of
a relationship doesn't line up neatly with the end of a lease, and you wind up
living as roommates with your now-ex. I went out on the road for dates with Pete
Yorn while I was living it, and playing songs like 'If It Don't Work Out' was a
way of processing what was waiting for me at the end of the run. I didn't give
myself the opportunity to censor the material or the luxury weighing how much of
myself I would feel comfortable opening up.The the music got such a strong
reaction from the first time I played it live that I knew it was striking a
nerve, which was really gratifying.ö
DÆAmato grew up in rural New Jersey and honed his songwriting skills working
with the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon while attending Princeton
University (where he wrote his senior thesis on Bruce Springsteen). ôI'd been a
fan of Muldoon's poetry before I met him," D'Amato says. "ThereÆs a song-ish
element to his writing, and it turns out that heÆs a huge music fan and heÆs
written lyrics for Warren Zevon and plays in a band. We worked out an
independent study where I'd bring him songs and he'd critique the lyrics and
give me books of Paul Simon and Leonard Cohen's writing to read. I still think
about all the lessons I learned from him every time I pick up a pen.öThe
resulting album, 'Down Wires,' earned praise everywhere from NPR and The New
York Times to Paste and American Songwriter, along with a nod from The World
Cafe for their emerging artist series ôNext" (past artists include Fleet Foxes
and Dawes). He followed it up with another home recording, 'Paper Back Bones,'
which BBC Scotland called "one of [our] favourites of all time." Dates in the US
and Europe with Josh Ritter, Rhett Miller, Pete Yorn, Ben Kweller, Alejandro
Escovedo, Joe Pug, Gretchen Peters, Mary Gauthier, and more ensued, in addition
to performances at the iconic Newport Folk Festival and Glasgow's Celtic
Connections.
The Shipwreck From The Shore is DÆAmatoÆs label and studio debut, and it's his
most realized work yet, revealing intricate harmonies powered by uplifting,
often ecstatic rhythms. Throughout, he preaches his epiphanies, relishing the
breakdowns and the strength to build it all back up again. ôThere's that old
saying æLet go or be dragged,Æ and I think that's the heart of this album," he
says. "When the storm hits, it's the trees that can bend that live to see the
next day.ö