ARTIST: Nicole Atkins
TITLE: Neptune City
LABEL: Red Ink/Columbia
GENRE: Pop
BITRATE: 187kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 39m total
RELEASE DATE: 2007-10-30
RIP DATE: 2007-10-30
Track List
----------
1. Maybe Tonight 3:16
2. Together We're Both Alone 4:18
3. The Way It Is 3:36
4. Cool Enough 5:25
5. War Torn 3:58
6. Love Surreal 4:07
7. Neptune City 3:53
8. Brooklyn's On Fire! 3:51
9. Kill The Headlights 3:19
10. Party's Over 4:15
Release Notes:
Bringing to mind a blend of Roy Orbison, Loretta Lynn and Jenny Lewis
accompanied by melancholy lyrics, Nicole Atkins grew up in Neptune, NJ. After a
few years playing in North Carolina with alt-country band Los Parasols, she
returned to the tri-state area playing solo gigs in New York City. Nearly broke
and ready to give up her music for a day job, Atkins struck a deal with Columbia
records as a result of a strong demo and impressive performances. She released
the "Bleeding Diamonds" EP while assembling her band Nicole Atkins & the Sea
(guitarist Dave Hollinghurst, bassist John Flaughter, drummer Dan Mintzer and
keyboardist Daniel "Cashmere" Chen). Named by Rolling Stone as an artist to
watch, her full-length record "Neptune City" was released in 2007.
___
The shores of New Jersey are littered, quite literally, with small towns whose
better days are far in the past. They're towns that have been written about, and
sung over; towns that have been mythologized and idealized; and they are the
towns that 28-year-old musician Nicole Atkins--a native of Neptune City, located
a stones throw from fabled Asbury Park--was born and raised in.
They can be places steeped in their own history, buried under the sense of their
own pasts. Places of hey-days and what-once-was. And it's that sense of
something lost, and of what perhaps should have been, and what might be, that
permeates Atkins's debut, Neptune City.
"Neptune City is just this old place," Nicole says. "There was this glory time,
way back when, that I never experienced, but that you cannot escape if you live
there. Everyone talks about. They almost yearn for it, but I never experienced
it. So maybe this album is my attempt to build something new on top of all
that."
It's these environs that brought her to where she is today. Nicole was that kid
slightly out of touch. When her friends were collecting the latest New Kids on
the Block album, she was raving about Traffic or Cream. At the age of 13 she
found an old beat up guitar in the attic of her house. It had belonged to an
uncle who died when he was young, and she taught herself to play a Grateful Dead
song. Her father turned her on to blues artists like Jimmy Reed, and allowed
Nicole to sit in on sessions with local musician friends. And then she left that
town, that place, behind, attending art school in North Carolina, where she
played for three years with the North Carolina alt-country band Los Parasols
before making a name for herself as a solo performer on New York City's
anti-folk scene. She slept in an old Dodge Ram Charger on Avenue A, finally,
with a little help from her friends, among them David Muller (occasionally a
member of Yoko Ono's band, Fiery Furnaces and Fischer Spooner) finally
discovered her own sound.
And it's that sound that washes over Neptune City, produced by Tore Johansson
(Cardigans, Franz Ferdinand, OK Go, Saint Etienne, New Order), an album that
sounds like it came from anywhere but the New Jersey Americana rock tradition
made famous by Bruce Springsteen. Her music ranges far afield: at some times
vaudevillian, at others psychedelic, a little bit country, a dash from early
musicals, all under a cloud of pop-noir, often all coming in the very same song.
Atkins writes songs that could have come from an episode of Six Feet Under, or
an updating of Grease, as directed by David Lynch.