RELEASED ON 24.1.2025 ON GLITTERHOUSE VIA SHELLSHOCK
CATALOGUE NUMBER GRLP1135
Chris Eckman is one of those songwriters with the alchemist’s touch. He’s proved it over the years as
the songwriter of the Seattle rock-folk band The Walkabouts, as well as across a lauded six album solo
career. His songs have been recorded by Townes Van Zandt, Steve Wynn, Willard Grant Conspiracy
(and others), and his last album, the spare, haunted Where the Spirit Rests, won the prestigious
German Record Critics Award (Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik) in 2021. Three and a half years
later he’s back with The Land We Knew the Best, and new stories to tell.
Yet this isn’t just a continuation, it’s not the same character. Time has passed, but maybe more
importantly, the geography has altered. The songs on The Land We Knew the Best aren’t populated
by the broken people and tumbledown, raw landscapes of the American West that has been the
setting for much of his previous work. He’s lived in Ljubljana, Slovenia for many years, and it’s seeped
into his consciousness. Not just the city, but also the mountainous and thickly forested nature that
surrounds it. The Land We Knew the Best has its own distinctive landscape. Its own emotional
geography.
The change isn’t just apparent in the lyrics; it suffuses the music, too. Where the Spirit Rests was so
sparse it stood almost naked. Here, the sound is fuller, warmer and more textured, creating a very
different frame for the songs. This is most evident in the lush, heartbreaking opener, “Genevieve,”
which features plaintive piano figures and hushed backing vocals from Slovenian singer-songwriter
Jana Beltran (who also sings on three other songs) and majestic strings courtesy of Belgian composer
/instrumentalist Catherine Graindorge (Iggy Pop, Nick Cave). It is like a widescreen version of a
Raymond Carver short story; distilled images from an upended life. But like most things in his music,
nothing is ever fully spelled-out. Everything remains deliciously ambiguous and unfolding. “Haunted
Nights” showcases Eckman’s love of country music and the rawer and darker side of that tradition.
One can hear echoes of Kristofferson and Nelson, artist’s he has covered in the past years, and even
the underappreciated melancholy of his fave 70’s country chanteuse, Sammie Smith. There’s Andraž
Mazi’s skybound pedal steel and a captivating duet vocal from Beltran. There’s hope measured by
time worn fatalism.
For the recording sessions, which took place in and around Ljubljana, Eckman assembled a group of
trusted collaborators. The rhythm section of Žiga Golob (contrabass) and BlaŽ Celarec (drums) have
recorded and toured with him for years, and lay down a supple foundation. Most of the other
musicians are friends from the local jazz and experimental music scenes including Ana Kravanja from
the acclaimed Slovenian avant-garde folk trio Širom. Ex-Londoner and Ljubljana resident Alastair
McNeill (Róisín Murphy, Kreda) was behind the board for Where the Spirit Rests and here he works
his magic again, fashioning the album’s varied atmospherics as well as adding guitars, subtle
keyboards and percussion to the mix.
Unlike his mostly subdued and acoustic previous release, flashes of electricity crackle across The
Land We Knew the Best. It bursts through McNeill’s liquid guitar solo on “Town Lights Fade” and
Eckman’s own controlled guitar feedback punctuating “Buttercup.” But it reaches a noisy, full-on
climax with “Laments,” with its defiant tag line: “I’ll never ever / give you up.”
“The way we captured that energy on ‘Laments’ was intentional,” Eckman recalls. “We were set
up like Neil Young and Crazy Horse in the studio, all in the same room, no isolation, with the
vocals booming through a PA. Most everything on the album is live with the sounds all bleeding
together. I’ve recorded that way a lot in the past decade. You have to throw away perfection and
commit to the moment.”
There’s a rough-hewn and undeniable beauty in the varied sonic and emotional textures found
on The Land We Knew the Best: dark ambiance, distorted crescendos, deep-voiced storytelling
and moments of hard earned stillness. It is an album of memory and place; heart and hope. It is an
immersive, vivid walk through the landscapes that Chris Eckman knows the best.
Tracklist:
1. Genevieve
2. Town Lights Fade
3. Running Hot
4. Buttercup
5. Laments
6. Haunted Nights
7. The Cranes
8. Last Train Home