Tag: Park the Van

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Drew Citron Releases a Cinematic Ode to “King of New York” for Gorgeous Solo Debut Single “Summertime”

Drew Citron is a singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and music venue owner who’s been a New York indie scene mainstay. She can trace the origins of her professional career to being a touring member of Frankie Rose’s backing band and with The Pains of Being Pure of Heart. Along with Class Actress’ Scott Rosenthal, she formed acclaimed act Beverly and opened Bushwick, Brooklyn-based music venue Alphaville. 

Citron’s solo debut Free Now is slated for an October 9, 2020 release through Park The Van — and the album reportedly finds Citron rediscovering herself as an artist, following the break up of her longtime relationship with her bandmate and business partner Scott Rosenthal. And as a result the album’ material is a roadmap to the evolution of a performer taking complete ownership of her craft and work in every element of the creative process with Citron engineering, producing and playing most of the instruments on an album that finds her collaborating with Rosenthal, Sam Owens (a.k.a Sam Evian), Ash’s Tim Wheeler, Danny Taylor and John Agnello. 

Free Now’s first single is the slow-burning “Summertime.” Featuring  a gorgeous and atmospheric arrangement featuring shimmering guitars, a soaring string arrangement, shuffling drumming and Citron’s achingly plaintive vocals, the track manages to sound both anachronistic and cinematic — while being centered around earnest yet ambitious songwriting. Sonically, the track reminds me a bit of Amber Arcade’s Cannonball EP– specifically “Wouldn’t Even Know” — but at its core its a sweet and much-needed hopeful song about new love with the wistful ache of knowing that too will fade. “A nostalgic song about summer feels more prescient than ever,” Citron explains. “Missing summer, loving it, living for late afternoon beach beers, god I’m missing summer already and it’s barely started. This is a sweet little song about new love in summer, not wanting it to end, wanting to hold on to that feeling.”

The recently released video for “Summertime” is a cinematically shot and deceptively mischievous homage to King of New York that has a wistfully nostalgic ache for all of the things we can’t quite have right now as a result of pandemic-related shutdowns. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Hans-Christian Søgaard Andersen is a Søro, Denmark-based singer/songwriter, guitarist and producer, who was best known as a member of renowned Danish band Racetrack Babies. As Andersen explains in press notes, “that band broke up as we were working on this album, so I thought it would provide some continuity to our fans. During the recording, our drummer Henrik Svendsen started calling me the captain of sorrow, because the songs were full of melancholy, so that became the name of the new band.”

Andersen and his new, Captain of Sorrow collaborators, which included Søren Hansen (guitar), Hans Madsen (bass) and the aforementioned Henrik Svenden (drums), wrote, recorded and produced their debut album Racetrack Babies in a wild burst of spontaneous creativity — and as the story goes, Andersen and his collaborators wanted to capture the diverse sounds that Andersen was hearing in his head. “Every song has the title of a band I once considered using, so I wanted them to sound different, as if it were 11 different groups.” The quartet started the album with some free form jamming and as Andersen recalls, “we listened to each song once, played it three or four times, then recorded it live. I gave them [the backing band] a free hand to crate their own arrangements but didn’t let them get too familiar with the songs. I wanted a rough sound, so you would know it was human beings playing the music.”

“Park the Van” Racetrack Babies‘ first single is a noisy and sprawling arrangement that finds Andersen and his bandmates nodding at noise punk, grunge and indie rock simultaneously as the band pair power chords, sinuous bass chords, stuttering and thundering drumming and anthemic hooks within a classic grunge rock song structure featuring alternating loud and quiet sections; but the major difference to me is that the band manages to add a mournful yet oose, jam band-like take to a familiar sound and aesthetic.