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Photo by Anna Webber
Nicole Atkins‘s latest album, her fourth, is the personification of transition: a musician moving from Jersey to Nashville and letting the sonic roots and influences of those cities soak up into the porous bones of her music. The product of Atkins’s life and resolve in sobriety after years of feeling numb towards the things that should have filled her with elation and pride, her fourth release Goodnight Rhonda Lee took three years to write, but only five days to record. Cherry on top? She recruited members of the prolific Dap Kings to back her up throughout the record.
Underneath the light-hearted, danceable energy of “Sleepwalking” lies Atkin’s waxing on a strange plane we’ve all had the odd fortune of experiencing, that plane of transition. Surroundings are familiar, but the feelings and energies are different, and you can’t do anything except wait for the next phase to settle in.
“Sleepwalking” appears on Goodnight Rhonda Lee, out now via Single Lock.
-Taylor Wallace// Host, Thursdays 8p-11p & Saturdays 2p-6p; Producer, Eklektikos with John Aielli
