It’s a road trip. It’s a memory. It’s Nate Currin’s Ghost Town.
This album grew on me—it wasn’t impressive the first time I popped in my earbuds. That changed when I put on my headphones and listened through it again (and again). There are intricacies living explored in the relatable moments which people live through every day. Lyrics echo within songs, each having a distinct sound while examining all the different feelings accompanying loss.
Nate starts calmly with “White Hills,” laying out the tensions that the entire album works through, those feelings of belonging, of longing while moving on, and of memories. You’ll groove a little to “Bleed,” where the build into the chorus goes on just long enough for you to feel that release when he sings, “and I BLEEEEEED MY HEART OUT,” keeping you there for the last minute of the song. You’ll start tapping your foot on “The Crying Wolf;” you know something interesting is going to happen when the tambourine shows up. Some tracks, like “5th Avenue,” have long outros that hang on–perhaps too long–while tracks like “Ghost Town” and “I Don’t Belong Here Anymore” have short outros that finish just as intensely. You’ll tap your foot again on “Let’s Stay In & Put a Dylan Record On.” You meditate while listening to the calm “Wild Heart” before diving into the folksy “The Tamiami Trail.” “Farewell, Savannah” and “The Highway” have lighter layers that form a space for Currin’s heartfelt lyrics.
For a post-breakup album, there’s a lot of movement. On the cover, Currin stares back at where he came from, leaning against a parked Pontiac with the top down. He takes listeners on a physical journey in addition to an emotional one, making stops in Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee, ultimately ending the album with the command to “Get Back North.” Time doesn’t exist in Ghost Town. The album lives in the moment straddling memory and feeling. Outros linger, intros build slowly, other voices chime in at the right times, and the last track primes you to start it all over again.
While this album does not stray too far from his other work, Ghost Town does have a wide range of influences. “Lover, Don’t Let Me Go” is, at times, slightly reminiscent of 80s pop. We get Currin’s harmonica stylings on “Let’s Stay In & Put a Dylan Record On.” There is more than a pinch of honkytonk sprinkled into “The Crying Wolf” (as well as a Lynyrd Skynyrd reference).
It’s a fast-paced world that we live in nowadays, which means there is even more of a place for the winding tunes of Nate Currin, for his thoughtful meditations on what it means to feel and emote, to remember and move on. Like he says, “There’s so much I wanna say. No, I’ll never be okay.” But everything will be okay. And every time you dream about escaping, every time you go through a bad breakup, every time you think about your ex, you can listen to Ghost Town.
Nate Currin’s Ghost Town releases August 1st on Archaic Cannon Records.