Title - If I Were Honest
Artist - Angie Goeke
For those of you not in the know, Houston, TX-based Americana singer-songwriter Angie Goeke is set to her release her debut full-length, If I Were Honest, on April 29th, 2022.
An independent release, the album was recorded in Nashville and produced by Mary Bragg. If I Were Honest presents a stunning, atmospheric Americana collection that melds the many facets of Goeke’s creative and personal life into one cohesive, elegant whole.
The album celebrates the enormous complexity of being human and boasts a spectrum of sounds ranging from textural and cinematic to candid and nostalgic.
1. So I Pray
2. Leftovers
3. Whiskey in a Teacup
4. If I Were Honest
5. Farewell
6. Starlight
7. Fayetteville
8. Fly Baby Fly
9. Half a Mind
10. Floored
This simply divine, wholly embracing and lovingly heartfelt album opens on the delicate musings within So I Pray and the playfully melodic Leftovers and follows those up with the rambunctious Whiskey in a Teacup, the lush gossamer of the title track If I Were Honest and then comes the aching honest Farewell.
Next up is one of my own personal favorites from this new recording, the almost ethereal Starlight and that is itself backed by the puckish Fayetteville, the beautiful storytelling balladry of Fly Baby Fly, the album rounding out with the sterner spine within Half a Mind, coming to a close on the rhythmic ebb and flow of the mid-tempo Floored.
Inspired by independent, individual artists like Ella Fitzgerald and Willie Nelson, Goeke quickly earned a reputation for her particular brand of haunting, narrative, emotionally complex songs. Her unique compositions, which she often begins writing on ukulele before expanding for a larger band, fuse elements of classic Americana, folk, bluegrass, and jazz, with her captivating vocal melodies front and center.
“I have spent most of my life feeling as though I need to meet the expectations and roles others have placed on me,” says Goeke. “With this album, I feel as though I am truly coming into my own. This album was a way for me to identify and reconcile all the different parts of myself.”
“I’m a mom and an artist, a quiet church-goer and a girl who loves a good cocktail. These things aren’t in opposition to one another, but I had to learn that. They’re all valuable—because they make me who I am. I don’t have to let go of one thing to grab hold of another.”
The songs provide vibrant, engaging insights into the mind of this multifaceted individual. The first single, “So I Pray,” a tender, gentle ode to the healing power and hope of prayer, was released on January 14th, 2022. The song premiered prior at Americana Highways, who said that the song “flows like a gentle spring rain.”
A sassy, empowering anthem that speaks to strong introverted women everywhere, the second single, “Whiskey in a Teacup,” was released on February 11th, 2022. The song and accompanying video premiered earlier that week at Glide Magazine, who called the song a “swaggering Americana-rocker tune… showcasing her honky tonk vocals with a tough edge as she uses a Southern analogy of keeping your strength behind a classy image.”
The third single, “Fly Baby Fly,” written for her four children, was released March 11th, 2022, while the fourth single and title track, “If I Were Honest,” came out this past April 8th, 2022.
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