June Star - Arrival EP (2022) Hi-Res

Arrival marks Baltimore Maryland’s June Star's 24th year and 18th recording. Reaching back to simplified acoustic arrangements, songwriter Andrew Grimm and pedal steel raconteur Dave Hadley retrace their roots with songs about waking up one day and not knowing how long you've been somewhere in life. With deft production by Bunky Hunt, Arrival nestles comfortably in the extensive June Star catalog.
With aching vocals and plaintive folk arrangements, Arrival comes off like a Smog-era Bill Callahan if he had chosen to dive inward or The Jayhawks if they were keener to stark emotional realism. Grimm’s rich baritone voice and Hadley’s atmospheric, elegiac pedal steel brings a time-honored aesthetic to their unique tales of fractious love, quixotic anxiety, the looming shadow of death, and the promise of a new day to try again.

Since 1998 Andrew Grimm’s June Star have been producing forms of Americana – and this one is acoustic guitar dappled with pedal steel, perhaps a mandolin, gentle rhythms and most importantly Grimm’s graveled careworn (think rough Tom Petty) observations on the state of the world and his life.

The five tracks are carefully curated jewels of music stripped of ornamentation, each beautifully produced. ‘Do You Think Anyone Hears’ is particularly affecting as a rumination on life and aging sits amid delicately plucked guitar notes that drip dappled sunlight through the lines concerning decay and the sense of time slipping away. The piano is so ghostly that the listener is not sure it is even there.

The pace of the EP never leaves pedestrian which in itself is not problematic, what is slightly more so is the overall feeling that this work is somewhat insubstantial. A running time of just shy of 16 minutes marks this out as a missive from the frontline rather than a statement or treatise...