JOHN CALVIN ABNEY - Transparent Towns - LP - Vinyl [SEP 19]

LP - Standard Edition Black Vinyl. 

John Calvin Abney rises again from the Oklahoman prairies with his latest album Transparent Towns. The ten songs focus on how we remember, and ultimately accept, though he is not always certain the memories we carry adequately mark the moments that make us.

“This record is wrapped around the passage of time, whether or not we can trust the memories that we swear on, how we forgive ourselves and others as seasons turn, and how we define what is important as we roll the boulder back up the hill,” Abney says of Transparent Towns. “We build these routines and live our stories, we rely on our histories and our memories - spoken and recorded. Now, we’re relying on copies of copies, memories of memories, all packed like sardines into our phones, and we’re losing the ability to tell our own stories. I have to constantly remind myself, as well as redefine what matters at the end of a day.”

Transparent Towns is the seventh studio album for Abney, and his first since 2022’s Tourist, which he crafted after spending the pandemic as an itinerant writer. In contrast Abney penned most of the album’s 10 tracks during a period of introspection and convalescence while recovering from vocal cord surgery in 2023. The time to himself - “I didn’t sing for nearly a year, and after surgery, I couldn’t talk for a month, and couldn’t sing for over three months,” he says, left him contemplating how to trace his experiences in the silence.

The album’s title track is Abney’s take on the inaccessible past, witnessing loss and grief through the years, damning the “days we let go left unsaid”, and accepting the uncontrollable circumstances we are sometimes placed in. “The troubles and the joys exist vibrantly in your memory, but you’re wondering if you remember correctly,” Abney remarks. “I’ve sometimes had this sort of confusion between memory and dreams - you crafted this ideal in your head of how things were or might be, in order to soften the blow of a harsher reality.”??The places we inhabit dictate how our memories form, and for Abney, there is one place to which he is constantly drawn: Oklahoma. Although he was born in the biggest little city in America, Reno, Nevada, he grew up learning guitar and piano in Tulsa, playing bars and DIY spaces from Norman to Stillwater. His affinity for the land that raised him is evident in the production of Transparent Towns.

Abney self-produced the record, tracking most of it at Cardinal Song outside of Oklahoma City, with Michael Trepagnier handling mixing and engineering. The band was comprised mostly of Sooner State musicians too, along with Lydia Loveless and John Moreland contributing harmony vocals. His signature vulnerable voice and lyrical handiwork comes through in each of the songs, along with his penchant for alternative pop melodies set against colorful chords and subtle soundscapes. Having toured for years backing up artists like Moreland, Wild Child, Ben Kweller, and S.G. Goodman, Abney embraces a lead role again, as he presses forward with the loving lament and defiant joy throughout Transparent Towns, calling us to leave behind the pressures we place on our ourselves and recognize that just because there is an ending, it doesn’t mean it’s the end.

"Infinite gratitude to the band who each deftly played in their own mystical voices during a week of Oklahoma summer rains and changing forms, to Trep for the grand patience, creative curiosity, and meticulous approach to capturing the way we shook the air in those rooms, to Bex for the friendship, sharp thinking, photographic eye, and herculean work organizing nearly everything for the project, to Lydia for your open heart, resounding voice, and for listening and encouraging as I worked through every line and melody ad infinitum at the kitchen table and from home, to Ben and Kristi Abney, Reed Watson, Adam Morrow, Beau, Moreland and Pearl, Dr Michael Johns at USC, Max Porter, Marisa and Evan, Martha, Max Pearl, Lori, Christine, Dr Alex, Rod and Catherine, Todd May, Drew and Maria, Garner at Longplay, Jessi, Ken, and the countless others in this world who kept me from running on fumes against the spitting sea, endless sands, and shifting dark."

Tracklist: 

Side A
1. Last Chance 
2. Wait For Us To Be Home
3. Prayers And Pollen
4. Transparent Towns
5. Who You Thought I Was

Side B
1. Jump The Gun
2. Regret Without Reason
3. Door Of No Return
4. Sierra Dawn
5. Cardinal Direction

Performed by:
John Calvin Abney - vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, mellotron, rhodes, piano, harmonica
Megan Palmer - fiddle, harmony vocals, Wurlitzer
Kyle Reid - pedal steel, bass on Cardinal Direction
Andrew Perusi – bass
Alberto Roubert - drums, percussion
Don Eanes - organ on Regret Without Reason
Lydia Loveless - harmony vocals on Transparent Towns
John Moreland - harmony vocals on Who You Thought I Was
Michael Trepagnier - harmony vocals on Regret Without Reason