One For The Weekend: Beachwood Sparks

Check out "Falling Forever" off the new Beachwood Sparks album, Across The River of Stars out July 19.   Photo: Kathleen Nicholson

Here's the scoop...

Beachwood Sparks recently announced their return after a 12-year hiatus with a new album, 'Across The River Of Stars,' (out July 19th via Curation Records – pre-order it right here) and they've just shared a new single,"Falling Forever," catapulting listeners into a sonic odyssey, echoing the cosmic fervour of The Byrds' legendary sound. Conjuring a kaleidoscope of melodies, weaving intricate harmonies reminiscent of the timeless magic of "Notorious Byrd Brothers," their eagerly anticipated album was produced by Chris Robinson (of The Black Crowes), a stalwart champion of the band, and the track is a testament to timeless psychedelia, jangle and gratitude in a 3-minute pop song.

 

Across The River Of Stars

 

Forming in the summer swelter of 1997 — built on the bones of Further and Strictly Ballroom — Beachwood Sparks stood among the charmed few who picked up the yoke left loose as Alt-Country’s early ‘90s wave crested and cooled. 

While the whole world was wrapped in pop, nu-metal, and indie rock, Beachwood Sparks were aloft on winds with The Byrds, weaving harmonies like Starry Eyed and Laughing, and lost in the heat-ripple haze with the Flying Burritos. 

To the uninitiated they’d seemed out of step, but to those who’d already been scanning the Cosmic channels, waiting for kindred hearts to answer the call, they were far ahead of their time. The Cosmic American tide has finally caught up to their curl in the last few years, and it seems like it’s finally just the time and place for Beachwood Sparks to assume their rightful place at the forefront of the new wave of psychedelic country.  

 

Some heads were always clued in. Sharp ears at Sub Pop picked the band up after their debut single on Bomp! and set sail the journey of Cali’s most consistent sunbeam surfers. The group stuck out like a wild hair on the Sub Pop roster, but as the label eased into their reputation as indie rock’s rudder in the early aughts, the band laid down a celebrated string of albums — S/T (2000), Once We Were Trees (2001) and the EP Make The Cowboy Robots Cry (2002) — before slipping into the ether in favor of new projects like All Night Radio, Mystic Chords of Memory, and GospelbeacH. They’d return to form, and their home at Sub Pop, after a decade away for The Tarnished Gold (2012) and revisit some early material on Desert Skies for Alive (2013). Now the band’s three founders — Brent Rademaker, Chris Gunst, and Farmer Dave Scher —  return to the fold once more for a new album that’s just in time to sweeten the Summer air. 

 

The band hunkered down at John Dwyer’s Discount Mirrors Studios in Los Angeles. Producer Chris Robinson (The Black Crowes, The Chris Robinson Brotherhood) along with renowned house engineer Eric Bauer (Ty Segall, Osees) helped the band give their sound a fresh salt scrub, tacking the sails into those requisite warm winds once more. A few more familiar names entered the studio as well, with Benjamin Knight (The Tyde) adding guitar, Andres Renteria (John Dwyer’s Bent Arcana) laying down the drums, Jen Cohen Gunst (Mystic Chords of Memory, The Aislers Set) on keys, and Clay Finch (Mapache) peppering in background vocals. The mix of friends and family (and friends who feel like family) helps add to the warmth and ease of the album. The band has long captured a kind of California ideal, and as we slip into Across The River of Stars, it still feels like a place where the days never end, the sun never burns, and the crash of waves lulls the listener into a place of peace. 

 

From the backstage stomp and dance floor romp of “My Love My Love” the band sets the scene, flings open the shutters, and lets the amp-fried goodness roll out into the streets. The album captures classic shades of Beachwood bliss — lovelorn yearning, now underpinned with Jen’s keys (“Torn In Two,” “Faded Glory”), last call crooners that slip over the horizon with the final rays of sun (“High Noon”) and a classic stacked-harmony hummer that reaches back to the haze and humidity of the Once We Were Trees era. While feeling at ease on the shelf alongside your copies of Rose City Band, Silver Synthetic, Color Green, The Hanging Stars, or any of the newer guard on Rademaker’s Curation Records, the band keeps one foot in classic territory and another just past the modern mirage. Far from following any trend, the band are keepers of the flame. Beachwood Sparks long ago entered the pantheon of country-psych’s headiest hitters, but with Across The River of Stars, they prove that they’re luminaries and leaders of a sound that still soaks the soul in the sublime.  - Andy French, 2024