Briston Maroney Presents: Paradise

For Briston Maroney, it's been a journey to arrive at the current moment. A mental, physical, emotional, and musical one. But it's left him equipped: not only with a deep understanding of self, discovered through life's trials and errors, but just as important, with a piece of art that reflects his personal growth. Sunflower, Maroney's debut album, is the culmination of the past decade of the now-22-year old's life. "It's all of the things I've been stoked about since I was 12 coming together," the wise-beyond-his-years, Nashville-based singer-songwriter says with a laugh of his striking album. "It's been a literal and physical relationship with the record as far as coming to a point where I understand what parts of me it represents, what it means to me as a person and what it means for my entire life."

Recorded between the summer of 2019 and early 2020 in LA with acclaimed producer John Congleton, Sunflower is "definitely a milestone," Maroney admits. "I'd be lying to say I didn't feel a little bit of that. And why not let yourself enjoy it?" It's also a gut-punch of fuzzy power chords ("Sinkin") and genteel acoustics ("Cinnamon"); deftly-composed pop songs ("Freeway") and hard-charging rockers ("Rollercoaster"). "I put all of myself into it," Maroney adds of the 10-track LP. In retrospect, he adds, "I definitely have this sense of calmness now. I did what I was capable of doing and I'm just glad I was around my friends and my people to help me get to this point."

An energetic live performer with a craft first honed in basements, living rooms, and jam-packed clubs, Maroney quickly developed a style steeped in the sweat and sounds of Nashville's DIY scene. After self-releasing his 2017 debut EP Big Shot and amassing a strong local fan base, Maroney ultimately attracted the attention of Canvasback Music. After signing with the label, his subsequent releases -- Carnival (2018), Indiana (2019), and Miracle (2020) -- remained entirely self-written with just a single producer credited on each project, namely Grammy Award-winning producer Tone Def and UK-based producer Jim Abbiss (Arctic Monkeys, Adele).

When Maroney began to tour the US and Europe alongside other artists, co-writing sessions became commonplace as they created music together while on the road. It was at this point he made the conscious decision that he would seek out additional songwriters and producers to work with on his debut full-length project; as Maroney's music world grew, so too did his desire for collaboration.

While Maroney is the first to admit he was 'terrified-in-a-good-way' to be working alongside top-notch talents with the likes of Manchester Orchestra's Andy Hull and venerated songwriter Dan Wilson on the creation of Sunflower, over time he came to understand a simple lesson. That being, "If you're approaching what you're doing from a place of love and kindness and passion you can be as open and flowing artistically as you want to be with your collaborators," he says. "I learned a ton from writing with those people," Maroney continues. "I think the biggest thing I took away is you get to decide how open you want to be, and you get to decide how much of a stage you want to set for emotions in songwriting."

If there was a sense of apprehension heading into such sessions, it's only because songwriting, for Maroney, has long been such a highly personal process. "It's been my journal for a really long time," he explains. "There's a beauty in songwriting. It's a scrapbook. It's a photo album. And if you're really putting your heart into what you're doing and writing songs for the right reasons, every one of them should take you back to a very specific place." For Maroney, the songs that comprise Sunflower take him along the long and winding path to the present, from his time as a young, upstart-tween musician busking at the Knoxville farmer's markets to playing dank basement gigs, sobering up amid personal struggles, and finally arriving right now at his most fully-realized self.

"Hopefully this record is representative of my journey," Maroney says, singling out the opening track "Sinkin" as summing up the record to him in a single cut. "Here's 100 percent of who I am," he says of the brash and bursting song. "It feels the most connected to my heart."

"I hope that people hear the record and see the songs as windows into what I've been experiencing and hopefully they'll relate to that," Maroney says, continuing. "I know these songs will continue to do that for me."

Working with producer John Congleton, Maroney explains, was about learning to trust his impulse. While Maroney had long been the first to question initial instincts, Congleton taught him to respect his gut. "He communicates really directly and really taught me a lot about speaking precisely and speaking about what you want to accomplish with a song and a record," Maroney recalls. "Whereas I have a tendency to be really abstract. I learned to be able to switch into that mode. He had my back the whole time."

Maroney gushes as he reflects on the session with Congleton that resulted in "It's Still Cool If You Don't." Their initial stab at writing together, "was the first experience of really letting go," Maroney contends of the song. "Just coming in and having a silly idea and being down to see where it goes." Working on "Cinnamon" alongside seasoned songwriter Jenny Owens Young, which Maroney describes as a "quieter more low-key song," was by contrast an exercise in "being all gushy" and exploring his feelings on love. "That was really fun to write a love song with someone else who was also in love with a person," Maroney offers.

Where "Rollercoaster," an older track that Maroney and his band typically closed out their sets with, was his attempt at getting a bit raucous, the track "Deep Sea Diver," which Maroney penned with Dan Wilson, was a far more meditative affair. Or as Maroney says with a laugh, "It's like, well, if this really pissed off angry rock thing doesn't work here's my best attempt at trying to be John Prine."

If anything, the process of assembling Sunflower was the best way Maroney learned to take his foot off the gas a bit and ease into his life in a more gratifying way. Where he admits at times throughout the recording process he was "squeezing it so hard," completing a brilliant debut album to him "was so much about just learning to be a little more laid back," Maroney says with a smile. "I still feel really connected to it, but I'm so stoked to share it and especially one day play it live," Maroney adds of Sunflower. "Right now, I am just so thankful and happy."

"Everything has to be said." This is the conviction guiding Indigo De Souza's sophomore album, Any Shape You Take. This dynamic record successfully creates a container for the full spectrum -- pushing through and against every emotion: "I wanted this album to give a feeling of shifting with and embracing change. These songs came from a turbulent time when I was coming to self-love through many existential crises and shifts in perspective."

Faithful to its name, Any Shape You Take changes form to match the tenor of each story it tells. "The album title is a nod to the many shapes I take musically. I don't feel that I fully embody any particular genre -- all of the music just comes from the universe that is my ever-shifting brain/heart/world," says Indigo. This sonic range is unified by Indigo's strikingly confessional and effortless approach to songwriting, a signature first introduced in her debut, self-released LP, I Love My Mom. Written in quick succession, Indigo sees these two records as companion pieces, both distinct but in communion with each other: "Many of the songs on these two records came from the same season in my life and a certain version of myself which I feel much further from now."

Throughout Any Shape You Take, Indigo reflects on her relationships as she reckons with a deeper need to redefine how to fully inhabit spaces of love and connection."It feels so important for me to see people through change. To accept people for the many shapes they take, whether those shapes fit into your life or not. This album is a reflection of that. I have undergone so much change in my life and I am so deeply grateful to the people who have seen me through it without judgment and without attachment to skins I'm shifting out of."

Lead single "Kill Me," written during the climax of a dysfunctional relationship, opens with the lines "Kill me slowly/ Take me with you." This powerful plea, that begins within the quiet strum of a single electric guitar, is diffused by Indigo's ironic apathy -- a slacker rock nonchalance that refuses to take itself seriously: "I was really tired and fucked up from this relationship and simultaneously so deeply in love with that person in a special way that felt very vast and more real than anything I'd ever experienced."

Across the table from that irreverence sits the sincerity of the single "Hold U," a more energized, neo soul-inspired love song that substitutes apathy for a genuine expression of care. "I wrote 'Hold U' after I left that heavy season of my life and was learning how to love more simply and functionally. I wanted to write a love song that was painfully simple."

Growing up in a conservative small town in the mountains of North Carolina, Indigo started playing guitar when she was nine years old. "Music was a natural occurrence in my life. My dad is a bossa nova guitarist and singer from Brazil and so I think I just had it in my blood from birth." It wasn't until moving to Asheville, NC that Indigo began to move into her current sound, developing a writing practice that feeds from the currents that surround her: "Sometimes it feels like I am soaking up the energies of people around me and making art from a space that is more a collective body than just my own."

"Real Pain," one of the most experimental tracks on the record, is Indigo's attempt to make that phenomena more intentionally collaborative. Starting soft before dropping down into a cavernous pit of layered screams and cries, "Real Pain" collages the voices of strangers -- audio bites Indigo received after posting online asking for "screams, yells and anything else." "Hearing these voices join together and move with my own was really powerful. The whole record was a release for me. And I hope it can be that for others."

At the forefront of all De Souza's projects is her magnetism -- her unique quality of spirit that is both buoyant and wise. While her backing band has undergone shifts between releases, her sound has stayed tethered to her vision. Any Shape You Take is the first full-length album that Indigo produced herself. Teaming up with executive producer Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee, The War on Drugs) and engineers/producers Alex Farrar and Adam McDaniel, Indigo recorded the album at Betty's, Sylvan Esso's studio in Chapel Hill, NC and finished it with additional production and mixing at Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville. Moving past the limitations of a home studio, Indigo could finally embody the full reach of her sound: "It felt really exciting to lean into my pop tendencies more than I have in the past and to trust my intuition to take the songs where I felt they should go. I had the tools to do it and collaborators who were willing to go there with me."

"I feel very much like a shape-shifter with my music, I'm always trying to embody a balance between the existential weight and the overflowing sense of love I feel in the world." It is exactly this balance that Indigo strikes in her Saddle Creek debut, Any Shape You Take. A listening experience that gives back, as you shed and shape-shift along with her.

Any Shape You Take was released August 27, 2021, via Saddle Creek.
 

Cece Coakley is finding her sound in real time. Influenced by songwriting greats like Brandi Carlile, Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers, Coakley has a knack for making ordinary moments feel monumental. Over the course of 2021, the 20-year-old singer-songwriter began turning her dreamy guitar ballad demos into fully realized songs. Her debut single “Cliché,” released earlier this year, has garnered over half a million Spotify streams to date. On her upcoming debut EP, Coakley digs deeper, skirting the line between indie and americana over sliding electric guitars. Musing about romantic clichés and hookup culture with a wisdom beyond her years, Coakley is an old soul living in the digital age. She has a gift for crafting moments into songs, a powerhouse voice to share them with, and nothing but time.