Guaranteed Broken Heart marks Karen Pittelman’s most singular album yet, with herself squarely at the helm. The result is a sophisticated album of classic crooning and instrumentation with a backbone of steel.
I had the opportunity to ask Karen a few questions about it.
My singular discovery at this year’s AmericanaFest was queer country trailblazers Karen & the Sorrows. When I got back home their new album waiting atop a big stack of mail. I took this as a sign. I was entranced by their set at the Crying Wolf, and while this may be their third album, I am making up for lost time and reliving that experience with this album full of catchy, danceable tunes with fabulous hooks.
There is a wealth of knowledge to be gleaned from the uncertain art of clairvoyance. Brooklyn-based band Phoebe Hunt & the Gatherers excavate the work of a woman named Baba Vanga, a blind 20th Century Bulgarian mystic, clairvoyant and herbalist, with their new video. The aptly-titled “Baba Vanga,” premiering exclusively today, is a transcendent art piece sculpting beauty and raw poeticism into an all-consuming exhibit of Vanga’s many prophecies.
With seven albums and umpteen live collaborations under her belt, Sarah Peacock has become a force of the Nashville scene. She’s shared the stage with the likes of Melissa Etheridge, Brandi Carlile, Ann Wilson, and many more during her career. At the core of her sound is cunning songwriting and a commanding voice to deliver it. Pensive, raw, and fiercely communicated, her brand of Americana showcases a hardy core developed by rock, country, and blues sensibilities alike.
Brooklyn-based band Low Tide (Eli Oberman, Courtney Robbins and Fen Ikner) contemplate loss and the passage of time on the sweeping, powerful “Who fans the Flames,” the latest release from their debut album The Alchemist (out on October 25).
Songwriter Eli Oberman says “Who Fans the Flames” was inspired by a Jewish tradition.
“When thinking about how to write a fire song, I was really drawn to the idea of writing about fire not as a raging powerful force (which is how I usually tend to think of it), but instead as a single, fragile flame that needs to be sheltered and protected,” Oberman tells Wide Open Country. “Imagining that led me to connect the imagery to my Jewishness, thinking about how we light yahrzeit candles in remembrance of lost loved ones on the anniversaries of their deaths. The sense that a flame is being used to almost collapse time in the song was really resonant with me.”
Nostalgia rules the roost on “Drunkard’s Dream,” which kicks off as a stripped-down ballad and builds into a Coldplay-sized blast of expansive arena pop. Throughout it all, EG Vines sings about a golden yesterday that seems to shine a bit brighter than the present, while pedal steel guitar and anthemic percussion sell the drama in the background.