Los Angeles, ca (Top40 Charts/ Shore Fire Media) An album of cathartic indie rock, urban folk, and masterfully crafted lyrics, Anthony D'Amato's accomplished The Shipwreck From The Shore will be released
September 2 on New West Records, marking his label and studio debut. The 10-track collection showcases the strongest songwriting of the young New York-based artist's career and is a riveting musical evolution that sees him growing from the homespun self-recorded solo acoustic songwriting first displayed on his 2010 album, Down Wires (declared by NPR as "a modern folk gem" and by Paste as "unforgettable tunes"), to a more diverse, full-band sound, aided by Matt McCaughan of
Bon Iver and The Rosebuds, Brad Cook of Megafaun and producer/keyboard player Sam Kassirer's (Josh Ritter, Lake Street Dive, Langhorne Slim) rich production. Album opener "Was A Time," a song D'Amato says was equally inspired by Pete Seeger and the band Suicide, is premiering at Top40-Charts.com today:
D'Amato traveled to Kassirer's The Great North Sound Society, an incredible 1700's farmhouse-turned-studio deep in the woods of
Maine to make the album. With Cook on bass, McCaughan on drums, Gabriel
Gordon (Natalie Merchant) on guitar, and Kassirer on keys, the group fleshed out the songs that D'Amato had written alone over a three month period and together forged an expansive and expressive sound. While some of the songs remained as D'Amato wrote them in his apartment, many of them took on new, unexpected life.
"'Was a Time' was originally a pretty straightforward folk song, but Sam had the idea to fill it up with all these old synthesizers and take it someplace a little more punk," D'Amato reveals. "Writing this song kind of felt like the tumblers in a lock falling into place, and once I finished it the door opened and a whole avalanche of others songs poured out. This album feels like a snapshot of a very specific moment in time. I didn't have a lot of distance to second-guess or filter things, which was a really exciting change of pace."
From the crisper production to the sharper, more concise songwriting, it's evident that D'Amato has spent the last several years honing his craft and developing a compelling sound. Songs like the redemptive "Back Back Back," inspired by Mavis Staples' endless positivity, meld the joyfulness of gospel with rootsy indie-folk, complete with horn blasts and clattering drums, while "Good and Ready" rides along on a '70s-inspired groove of loping bass and soulful organ, and "Hard To Say" is a galloping, anthemic blast of doubt and faith.
Elsewhere, the plaintive "Ludlow"—featuring D'Amato's fingerpicked acoustic guitar and yearning vocals paired with gentle atmospherics and clarinet provided by Jocie Adams of Arc Iris and The Low Anthem—and the sparse, heart-wrenching "If It Don't Work Out"—with a chorus of "If it don't work out/You take the bed and I'll take the couch" that cuts to the bone—showcase his ability to bowl you over with little accompaniment, and his extraordinary ability to distill complex emotions into universally relatable, beautifully poetic lyrics.
While a junior at Princeton University, where he majored in English and American studies, D'Amato created his own independent study with Pulitzer Prize winning poet Paul Muldoon, a professor at the prestigious university and the New Yorker's poetry editor. Together Muldoon, who has collaborated on lyrics with Warren Zevon, helped D'Amato develop his sense of structure and imagery, which informed much of his self-released debut album, Down Wires, and everything since.
D'Amato first came to national attention with 2010's aforementioned Down Wires, an album he recorded with a single microphone in his college bedroom. The record earned praise everywhere from NPR and The New York Times to Paste and American Songwriter, along with a nod from The World Cafe for their emerging artist series "Next" (past artists include
Fleet Foxes and Dawes). He followed it up with another home recording, Paper Back Bones, which BBC Scotland named one of the Best Americana Albums of 2012. Dates in the U.S. and
Europe with Josh Ritter, Rhett Miller, Pete Yorn, Ben Kweller, Alejandro Escovedo, Gretchen Peters, Joe Pug,
Israel Nash, and more ensued, in addition to performances at the iconic Newport Folk Festival and Glasgow's Celtic Connections.
With The Shipwreck From The Shore, D'Amato is clearly poised to make some big waves.
