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200g Vinyl Mastered by Bernie Grundman! Pressed at Quality Record Pressings! 100% Analog Project!
Crains songs are full of expansive melodies that veer off in unpredictable directions, with lyrics that explore conflicting emotions with uncommon insight and compassion. She has a jazz singers phrasing, often breaking words into rhythmic fragments that land before and after the beat, stretching syllables or adding grace notes to uncover hidden nuances in her lyrics.
The album is pressed on 200 Gram Vinyl at Quality Record Pressings. Produced by John Vanderslice and mastered by Bernie Grundman, this is 100% an analog recording... masters transferred directly from tape to lathe.
Under Branch & Thorn & Tree was recorded at Tiny Telephone Studios in San Francisco, with John Vanderslice (The Mountain Goats, Spoon), who also helmed last years Kid Face. We recorded straight to two-inch tape on a Studer 24-track machine and mixed down to 1/2-inch tape on an Ampex machine. The pre-amps were tube and we never used a computer. Our effects were done manually through tape looping and manipulation. Most of the arrangements happened in the moment, as we recorded. My guitar and vocals are all first or second takes.
These intimate vignettes are marked by Crains careful attention to the tiny details that often escape us, supported by the subtle musical settings she crafted with Vanderslice and the backing musicians.
I dont write protest songs in the traditional sense, Samantha Crain says, talking about the songs on her new album, Under Branch & Thorn & Tree. But Im always listening to the voices of people around me. These stories are told from the perspective of the underdog, the 99% of us that are working people. They might not be literal protest songs, but the lives of the people within these songs speak at the same volume if you listen.
Produced by John Vanderslice. Recorded and Mixed at Tiny Telephone Studio in San Francisco, CA. Engineered and Mixed by John Vanderslice and Jacob Winik.
"On Under Branch & Thorn & Tree a folk base featuring assured, fingerpicked acoustic guitar remains prominent, but the arrangements are augmented with dark, mid-period Beatles atmospherics courtesy of the Magic Magic Orchestra (violin, viola, cello). Crain has called this her 'protest album,' and so it is." - David McGee, The Absolute Sound, 3.5/5 Music, 3.5/5 Sonics
"The golden gatefold cover art of Samantha Crain's Under Branch & Thorn & Tree makes clear that this is not a collection of "good times" tunes, but one is still left unprepared for the relentlessly bleak stories of betrayal, despair and desolation Crain delivers in an often pain-wracked voice that's somehow wrapped in a soothing, mesmerizing balm." - analogplanet, Music 9/11, Sound 9/11
Features:
200g Vinyl
Pressed at Quality Record Pressings
Mastered by Bernie Grundman
100% Analog Project
Gatefold Jacket
Includes full album download and exclusive bonus song "Cold Hands"
Produced by John Vanderslice
Selections:
1. Killer
2. Kathleen
3. Elk City
4. Outside the Pale
5. You Or Mystery
6. When You Come Back
7. Big Rock
8. All In
9. If I Had A Dollar
10. Moving Day
