Wesley Stace - Late Style

Format: CD
Catalogue No.: OVCD430
Barcode: 810075110463
Release Date: 17 Sep 2021
Genre: Alternative

12 new tracks from Wesley Stace (aka John Wesley Harding)
Written with David Nagler (musical Director of Stace’s Cabinet Of Wonders) Recorded in Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Chicago, and San Francisco with special guests Chris von Sneidern, Prairie Prince, Kelly Hogan and Nora O’Connor Liner notes by author, poet, and screenwriter Barry Gifford With Late Style, Wesley Stace, the artist formerly known as John Wesley Harding, has done things differently. Having begun to put some new lyrics to music, in his usual way, singing to an acoustic guitar, he realized he was coming up with old solutions, reinventing a wheel he had already made, with chord progressions and melodies that worked as folk and pop songs but were not satisfying his desire for something fresh, something he’d be excited to listen to in 2021. So, he turned to David Nagler, the musical director of his portable variety show, the Cabinet of Wonders, to be the Rodgers to his Hart, the Elton to his Bernie, the Bachrach to his David.
Late Style is influenced by artists like Mose Allison, Carla Bley, Nina Simone, Bob Dorough, Steely Dan, Harry Nilsson, Gil Scott-Heron, the Bee Gees, Tom Lehrer, the Carpenters, and even the Partridge Family, without imitating them, so the songs feel modern and “modern” all at once. You can call them uneasy easy listening – smooth, but oddly shaped, with surprising harmonic changes and rhythmic angles. They have the paradoxical flavor of having been written to be hits without any thought of having hits at all.

Tracklisting
1. Where The Bands Are
2. Everything All The Time
3. You Bright Future
4. Hey! Director
5. Come Back Yesterday
6. All The Yous
7. The California Fix
8. Well Done Everyone
9. The Impossible She
10. Do Nothing If You Can
11. Just Sayin’
12. How You All Work Me