For those unaware, Maia Sharp is a Nashville-based musician, originally from Los Angeles, and in addition to writing her own great solo material has written songs for Bonnie Raitt, Trisha Yearwood, The Chicks, Cher, and Art Garfunkel and more.

Indeed, of her last album, American Songwriter opined: An accomplished and prolific artist, Sharp, throughout her career, has had the ability to write about virtually anything, from a simple observation to using misheard lyrics for her own new compositions….

Maia Sharp is now set to release her brand new full length album Reckless Thoughts on August 18th, 2023, a recording that both continues and refines a confessional mood that emerged with Sharp’s aforementioned previous album, 2021’s Mercy Rising.

While that record was an Americana eruption of emotions from the end of a long marriage and leaving her native California, Reckless Thoughts is a more nuanced, clear-headed review of that life-changing roll of the dice. This album took some searching, mulls Sharp. It was more of a challenge, because I’m not in the middle of a dramatic emotional mess anymore.

The self-produced Reckless Thoughts was largely tracked at Nashville’s Resistor Studio, with owner/engineer Joshua Grange (Sheryl Crow, k.d. lang etc.) also contributing electric guitars and lap steel.

The perennial influence of musical collaborator, mentor, and longtime friend Bonnie Raitt is once again evident, amidst flecks of Phoebe Bridgers’ contemplative melodicism, the country-folk eloquence of the late John Prine, and Bon Iver’s adventurous spirit. The album is preceded by digital singles Kind and Old Dreams.

1. She’ll Let Herself Out
2. Old Dreams
3. On a Good day
4. California
5. Kind
6. Too For Now
7. Gone Cryin’
8. Fallen Angel
9. Everything You Need
10. The Road to Hell and Back

This wholly rousing, organically heartfelt new recording opens on the rhythmically sonic She’ll Let Herself Out and the veritably ethereal Old Dreams and then we get brought forth the summer’s breeze of On a Good Day, the folk Americana vibe of California, and then comes the inspirational Kind.

Along next is the melodically fluttering Too For Now and the countrified twang of Gone Cryin’ and they are in turn backed seamlessly by the gently rambunctious Fallen Angel, the album rounding out with the shimmering Everything You Need, closing on the impassioned The Road to Hell and Back.

I always want to write in a way where people will plug their own lives into the song, says Nashville-based singer-songwriter Maia Sharp while reflecting on her forthcoming 9th solo album, Reckless Thoughts, due August 18th. And I want them to choose this album because it provokes whatever it is they need to feel.

Kind - by Maia Sharp from Reckless Thoughts

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