Stuart Pearson releases new album

LA-based folk rock artist Stuart Pearson has been releasing music for fifteen years, over which time he’s dropped a string of albums packed full of perfectly crafted songs. More recently he’s drawn releases together by linking them in a collective series. 2020’s album Dark Americana: Stories and Songs was the inaugural release of America gone wrong.

Now he brings us the follow up album, Dark Americana 2: Mojave. Drawing on a more modern take of Americana than the last album, it’s still filled with folk song whispers and cautions from a century ago. There are hints of Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen thrown in a bucket with ghosts of the 1800’s. These are murder ballads, songs of bad decisions, bad people and bad consequences.

The new album features over a dozen instruments as well as found percussion (bath tubs, pots, pans and big sticks) and was recorded over the last 18 months while in quarantine. Lifted from the album comes the latest single The Interstate, a rhythmic and dusty folk rock piece that conjures desert driving visions. Accompanying the single comes the new music video, adding a visual pairing to the hypnotic and hazy sound.

Watch the video for The Interstate below

Mojave sees Stuart Pearson dabble with modern beats and organic and electronic instruments to reflect the creaking, ruined, rundown pulse of the abandoned buildings littering today’s Mojave desert. On the lead single, You Don’t See Me (Jimmy Crack Corn) his new sound is perfectly captured in a trippy sound led by a crackling vocal style.

Listen to Mojave below