It’s one thing to be prolific, but quite another to make music that is consistently imaginative, exploratory and impactful. Over the course of sixteen solo albums and a career that extends over four decades, Rees Shad has managed to do both.
Shad’s latest solo offering, Porcelain Angel, finds him venturing back into the Americana landscapes of his roots. Shad has returned there, not to revisit old haunts, but in order to build himself a new and more appropriate space. He achieves this with craft now informed by over forty years of genre jumping, song iteration and studio recording.
The first single from the album, ‘Ain't That the Way’ with an impressive animated video, is available now, with further singles ‘Isn’t it a Lovely Day’, ‘Magic Lantern Presentation’ and ‘Porcelain Angel’ set to follow suit on February 7, February 28 and March 10 respectively.
Porcelain Angel subtly blends stylistic approaches sidestepping the marketing pigeonholes of genre to purposely blend various musical forms into a foundation for captivating narratives inhabited by memorable characters. From the frightened daughter of a 19th Century sharecropper in ‘Magic Lantern Presentation’, to a loner receiving mysterious postcards in ‘Great Big World’, to the justifications of an absentee father in ‘The Right Thing’, Shad continues to paint portraits that are “sometimes terse, always tender, [where] the songs resonate with emphatic emotions convincingly conveyed in every verse and chorus” (American Songwriter).
Shad’s production style is polished without pretence. Deeply invested in communing with other musicians, Shad’s albums hold a vibrancy of creative conversation that is as much an expression of the collective as that of an individual artist. Over the years he has invited a myriad of musicians into the recording studio to work with him. Such luminaries as Larry Campbell, Guy Clark, John Platania, Jay Unger and Molly Mason have contributed to the musical conversations. In this way Shad has been able to continue to produce albums which are singular experiences as well as identifiably spoken in Shad’s voice. Case in point, Porcelain Angel exudes a joyous creative energy as Rees is joined by his bandmates - saxophonist Marcus Benoit, bassist Jeff Link and drummer Bobby Kay, along with vocalists Eleanor Dubinsky, Kemp Harris, Wanda Houston, and Natalia Zukerman (who also plays lap steel), guitar virtuosos Rick Ruskin & Dario Acosta Teich and harmonica wizard R.B. Stone. The comradery of this collection of artists and friends is ever evident. There is joy in the performances that comes through from the very first verse and culminates in a solid tapestry of songs that make this collection one of Shad’s most intriguing yet.
Porcelain Angel sits amid a vast, vibrant catalogue of offerings that are steeped in eloquence and emotion. Not surprisingly critics took notice from the start, with Shad’s 1994 debut, Anderson, Ohio earning him praise as a “wordsmith to watch”. Ever since, Shad has relentlessly pushed the boundaries of his musical storytelling, earning himself a reputation as not just a songwriter, but a true architect of compelling narratives in the contemporary Folk and Americana scene.
The first single from the album, ‘Ain't That the Way’ with an impressive animated video, is available now, with further singles ‘Isn’t it a Lovely Day’, ‘Magic Lantern Presentation’ and ‘Porcelain Angel’ set to follow suit on February 7, February 28 and March 10 respectively.
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