Jackie Greene - The Modern Lives Vol. I '2017

Tracks list

Hailed as the Prince of Americana by the New York Times, Greene has always had a
knack for capturing the human experience in all its messy, emotional complexity,
and on his new EP, The Modern Lives – Vol 1, he draws inspiration from
some of the great social paradoxes of our 21st century world: that the
technology designed to simplify our lives can actually complicate them in ways
wed never imagined, that the most crowded cities can actually be the loneliest
places to live, that the constructs meant to connect us to each other can
actually leave us feeling more isolated than ever. While Greenes songwriting
chops were more than enough to place him in a league of his own (NPRs World
Café raved that his sound seems at once achingly intimate, surprisingly
energetic and unburdened by adherence to genre), Greene also emerged as a
singular singer and guitarist, prompting Rolling Stone to praise his honeyed
tenor and name him among the most notable guitarists from the next generation of
six-string legends. Between studio albums and his own tours, Greene took up
prestigious gigs playing with Phil Lesh & Friends, The Black Crowes, Levon Helm,
and Trigger Hippy, his supergroup with Joan Osborne. The Modern Lives –
Vol 1 may tip its cap to some of Greenes heroes and colleagues, but the sound is
100\% his own. Recorded entirely by Greene in a Brooklyn basement, the
collection finds him playing every single instrument and serving as both his own
engineer and producer. The EP also marks Greenes first release as part of his
new partnership with Blue Rose Music, the record label and multimedia company
founded by media and tech veteran Joe Poletto. Released from the shackles of
traditional music business models, Greene was free to follow his muse in the
basement. There, he found that the physical limitations of the space were
actually inspiring rather than prohibitive, as they forced him to get more
creative than ever with his arrangements and to learn to let go in the quest for
sonic perfection. Its a distinctly New York metaphor, and Greene wastes no time
in getting to the point on the EP as he grapples with the close quarters and
hectic pace of life in his new hometown. The collection opens with the
rollicking, funky Americana of the title track, which finds him singing, Your
Times Square looks like a graveyard / Ive got a billboard for my headstone and a
car horn for my eulogy. On The Captains Daughter, he reflects, I could sleep
here on the stair / Who would notice, who would care? Throughout the album,
Greenes storytelling offers its own brand of philosophy, one that resists the
urge to find easy answers. On Back Of My Mind, for instance, he crafts a wistful
ode to a simpler kind of life, but rather than waxing nostalgic for days gone
by, he questions the veracity—even the usefulness—of memory,
suggesting that fiction may cloud fact when it comes to looking backwards.
Forward momentum, it seems, is the key to survival in our modern world. The
banjo-and-dobro blues of Tupelo warns of the devils lurking in our past should
we dare return from whence we came, while a gritty, distorted cover of Willie
Dixons Good Advice concludes that you keep on going if youre sure youre right.
By the time we hit EP closer Alabama Queen, we find that true freedom in this
modern world ultimately belongs to the freaks and weirdos, those unburdened by
the expectations and weight of society, those willing to follow their muse in
pursuit of their own kind of happiness. If the open roads got him longing for
the dark, noisy confines of a Brooklyn basement, perhaps modern life has finally
turned Jackie Greene into a New Yorker, after all.

Tracklist:
01. Jackie Greene - Modern Lives (3:26)
02. Jackie Greene - Back Of My Mind (5:04)
03. Jackie Greene - Tupelo (3:51)
04. Jackie Greene - Good Advice (4:23)
05. Jackie Greene - The Captains Daughter (3:38)
06. Jackie Greene - Alabama Queen (5:13)

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