The Wreckage, Kai Crowe-Getty’s first solo album (due out June 27th), won’t be what you expect if you’re familiar with his time fronting the rock band Lord Nelson. Sonically, The Wreckage turns the volume down a bit with a wide-open ambience, at the same time Kai turns up the emotion with the most personal set of songs he’s ever written.
“I’ve played in big rock ’n ’roll settings for a long time, and I do enjoy that,” says Kai. “But where Lord Nelson is more of a party band, this is a vehicle for a different avenue of songwriting that explores different things. I wrote this album’s songs while working through some catharsis. I’m not overly nostalgic, but a lot of these songs seemed to end up in that vein where you’re simultaneously looking back and forward.”
Kai has spent the past decade-plus fronting Lord Nelson, a band named in honor of their stomping grounds in the Appalachian artists’ enclave of Nelson County, Virginia. He’s been playing music since middle-school years, starting with a band named Blue Lava (yes, after a lava lamp). His ambitions and seriousness grew over time, especially when Lord Nelson started up, and Kai’s solo work stands as a peak beyond that.
As was the case for a lot of artists, the Coronavirus pandemic shutdown knocked Lord Nelson off-stride. While the band remains a going concern, members including Crowe-Getty have been exploring other outlets in recent years.
“I spent a lot more time on songs than I have in the past, mining a lot of things from my own life that I think resonate,” he says. “Not writing toward an audience but crafting a new point of departure. These songs are much, much more personal for me. Not exactly autobiographical, but I’d say there’s more of me here than in anything else I’ve ever done – a dive into darker themes, trying to find light in a dark tunnel.”
One example of this is the album’s stately first single, “Heavy as Heaven,” and today we are offering an exclusive premiere of the tune and its accompanying video on Glide. With a sweeping and moody Americana soundtrack, Crowe-Getty evokes a sense of hopelessness before arriving at something like hope by the end. Musically, the song finds him incorporating harmonies for powerful emotional resonance and drawing inspiration from acts like Tom Petty and Whiskeytown. The video, which portrays Crowe-Getty strumming over visuals of open landscapes, accentuates the solemn yet optimistic outlook and sound of the song. We also get soulful organ, twangy steel, and flourishes of guitar solos layered in to add to the fullness of the sound.
Crowe-Getty describes the inspiration behind the tune:
“I was coming off a long stretch of touring and some pretty unfulfilling shows, feeling broken and disconnected from the world. The idea of needing to be healed from the thing that is supposed to bring you the most joy was a complex emotion. The simple melody hook was in my head when I got home and I played it on my out of tune piano until the words just came rushing out. I finished this right before the COVID pandemic hit, and then the lyrics took on a whole new meaning. This was one of the very first songs tracked for the record and almost didn’t happen: through mechanical issues, the session we booked got constrained and by the time gear was up and running again, we only had time for a couple of tracks. I think this was the second pass through any of the players hearing the track and it was magic in the room.”
WATCH:
One Response
this song sucks