Sera Cahoone - From Where I Started (2017)

The world of American roots music is no stranger to Seattle songwriter Sera Cahoone. Even though her last three albums were on Sub Pop Records and she spent years at the top of the indie charts, she's always had a streak of Americana that ran through her music, a love of the humble folk song that bolstered her art. She's returning now to these earliest influences with her new album, From Where I Started (to be released March 24, 2017). Growing up, Cahoone first found her voice in Colorado dive bars, backing up old blues musicians at age 12 on the drums. Her father, a Rocky Mountain dynamite salesman, took the family along to mining conferences and old honky-tonks in the state. The sounds she heard there—the twang of country crooners, cowboy boots on peanut shells—have stayed with her all the way to Seattle, where she lives now, and the seminal indie rock bands she's been a part of in the city (Carissa's Weird, Band of Horses). To make From Where I Started, her first new album since 2012's Dear Creek Canyon, Cahoone traveled south to Portland to work with producer John Askew (Neko Case, Laura Gibson, Alela Diane). Askew brought together key Portland musicians like Rob Burger (Iron and Wine, Lucinda Williams), Dave Depper (Death Cab For Cutie) and Annalisa Tornfelt (Black Prairie) with Cahoone's Seattle bandmates - Jeff Fielder (Mark Lanegan, Amy Ray) and Jason Kardong (Son Volt, Jay Farrar). The band lays a deep bedrock beneath Cahoone's songs, supporting her arcing vocals and innovative guitar and banjo playing. The album is driven by a strong rhythmic sensibility, owed to Cahoone's background as a drummer for indie rock bands. "A lot of my songs start as a beat, I add guitar, then lyrics at the end," she says. "When I write songs I usually sit at my drum kit playing both drums and guitar at the same time." From Where I Started plays on the rougher, darker edges of the traditional love song. Like any good country album, the songs here deal with love and loss, but Cahoone also knows how to surround loss with hope, to temper a sad song with a turn in the major key. The optimism of the love song "Up To Me," buoyed by fingerpicked guitar and banjo, gives way to the weary resignation of "Taken Its Toll," with its plaintive pedal steel and echoing vocal harmonies. "Ladybug," is a poignant song that followed the tragic death of Cahoone's cousin Tawnee. From Where I Started represents a refocusing for Sera Cahoone. It positions her as a songwriter beholden to the old country sounds she grew up with, a songwriter who's always been able to deftly translate a personal perspective into a universal view. It's an album about falling in and out of love, finding new hope, and learning that the best way to move forward is to remember where you began.

TRACKLIST
01. Always Turn Around 03:07
02. Better Woman 03:29
03. Ladybug 03:22
04. Up to Me 03:13
05. Time to Give 02:34
06. Taken It's Toll 03:32
07. Only One 03:17
08. Not Like I 03:39
09. Dusty Lungs 02:48
10. Tables Turned 03:06
11. House Our Own 03:51