Sean Magwire - Echoes in the Wind (2025)

Sean Magwire has a new Americana album releasing this week, Echoes in the Wind, which is brimming with soul searching and deep truthful observations. Hailing from heartland country in Indiana, Sean has nestled in the Northeast and writes songs that are quite stunning and observational in the same vein of gems that John Prine mined.

Setting the pace for the album is “Not Ready Yet,” that comes in bright and shiny with an impressively poetic lyrical prose: “at the risk of sounding obsolete my sentiment is not complete without the air of customary dread, see I’m melancholy to the core but I’m winning just by waking up in bed.” The mandolin is pretty sounding as Sean laments the weariness deep in his bones.

Hazel is nice and easy acoustic guitar with punctuations of keys and the beautiful lyricism continues with advice from his mom: “son you can’t take no chances, sitting on fences, throw your coat on and go out there in the cold. you’re gonna find what you’re missing somewhere in the distance down jagged streets and broken roads where the wild wind blows.” Outstanding.

“Foxhole” is an equally fantastic tribute to advice from his grandad with a pretty musical arrangement and lines like: “the closest that you’ll come to seeing pure perfection is the laughter in the smile upon your lover’s face, so be grateful for the time and breath that we are given, because we are only specks in the fleeting depths of space.”

“Long Straight Line” could easily be a chart topper. It’s relatable with that forward drive that makes folks of all listening levels gravitate toward a song. Labels, are you listening? Why is this guy still schlepping his own stuff? “Better Than This” busts out the fiddle in a song of optimism, and “It Moves Me” is a song about running to the beach when the world is ending.