When it comes to his upcoming album, In the Shadow of the Mountain, 25-year-old singer-songwriter Cole Chaney is pretty candid and blunt about who he is and what kind of music he wants to make — the result of which, this stunning offering from an artist wise beyond his age.

“There’s a yin to every yang,” Chaney says. “I want nothing more than for people to be creatively fulfilled, and to do what they want. But, for me to preach that? I have to practice it.”

That attitude resides at the core of the record, where the trajectory of the songs seemingly — more so purposely — shoot off in the opposite direction of many of his contemporaries in the Americana, country and folk music scenes. In truth? Chaney is summoning his rock roots.

“I’m not concerned with being labeled as ‘country.’ There’s not a lot of music being released right now that is doing much for me — I want to make something I want to listen to.”

Pointing to his lifelong admiration for 1990s rock — specifically Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Stone Temple Pilots — as a vital influence on the sonic landscape of the album, Chaney aimed to find a melodic balance between that raw and real rock sound and the bluegrass and folk music of his native Kentucky.

“I wanted to make something that sounded like Ralph Stanley went in and got backed up by Soundgarden,” Chaney notes. “I write what I listen to. And whatever I listen to is going to come out in my music.”

1. Into
2. The Shadow of the Mountain
3. Grind
4. Spirit
5. The Unsatisfied
6. Charlene
7. Let The Love Die
8. Feels Like Rain
9. Alone?

Having had this album captured by famed producer Duane Lundy at his legendary studio in Lexington, Kentucky, and drawing from his lifelong admiration for 1990’s rock, he opens his stunningly crafted new recording on the atmospheric Into and the engagingly emphatic title cut The Shadow of the Mountain and them we get given the rhythmically crafted storytelling within Grind and the willfully embodied Spirit.

Along next is the melodious The Unsatisfied which is in turn backed seamlessly by the gently all-embracing Charlene, the emboldened mid-tempo rocker Let The Love Die, the set rounding out on the warmly rounded Feels Like Rain, coming to a close on the intensely stirring Alone?

Official Purchase Links

Cole Chaney @ Spotify

Cole Chaney @ Facebook