Title - The Ghost and the Wall
Artist - Joshua Radin
For those unaware, with more than 1-billion streams and 1-million records sold, Josh Radin still views songwriting as a healing force, where acoustic eloquence and dyed-in-the-wool Americana storytelling can soothe the roughest seas.
His earnestness and transparency have earned comparisons to artists like Elliot Smith and Paul Simon, with poignant, refreshingly frank lyrics that lead to catharsis and eye-opening realizations (Rolling Stone).
He’s sold out shows on four continents, performed with artists like Ed Sheeran and Sheryl Crow, and earned super-fans like Michelle Obama and Ellen Degeneres, who invited him to perform at her wedding.
On his latest collaboration, the just-released The Ghost and the Wall (via Nettwerk Records) with producer Jonathan Wilson (Father John Misty, Conor Oberst), Radin explores the walls we build to protect ourselves against sadness and pain, especially this past year.
From the lilting vocals of Better Life, which details an immigrant’s journey, to the folksy picking of Make It Easy about the relentless search for love, Radin wrestles with the sense of longing and alienation that haunted us this year, producing an album during quarantine without ever seeing his producer face-to-face. It’s a theme I’m fixated on, he explains. I’m trying to heal myself and others in the process.
1. Goodbye
2. Fewer Ghosts
3. Better Life
4. Make It Easy
5. Hey you
6. I’ll Be Your Friend
7. You’re My Home
8. Not Today
9. Till The Morning
10. Next to Me
After sixteen years, now-nine albums, and hundreds of shows, Joshua Radin still treats music as an antidote to any ailment and thus here on The Ghost and the Wall, the gold-selling, Los Angeles-based singer and songwriter finds healing in between waves of acoustic eloquence and dyed-in-the-wool Americana storytelling.
His latest full-length album - produced by Jonathan Wilson (Father John Misty, Conor Oberst, Dawes) - opens on the gently jaunty Goodbye and the dulcet gossamer of Fewer Ghosts and backs those up seamlessly with the upbeat and joyous bounce of Better Life, the melodically translucent Make It Easy, and then we get one of my own personal favorites, the hot summers breeze of Hey You.
A writer of tunes that are ready made for the soundtrack of all out lives, the troubadour continues a cycle of catharsis meant to be shared among any and all receptive hearts with the candidly uninhibited I’ll Be Your Friend and the massively euphoric You’re My Home, which is in turn followed by the lockdown-imbibed scenery of Not Today, this quite mesmerizingly affluent new album rounding out on the fraughtly clenched Till The Morning, closing on the rolling thistledown of Next To Me.
Joshua Radin - Fewer Ghosts [Official Music Video]
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