Jeremy Ivey — Invisible Pictures (2022) Mp3 / Flac / Hi-Res

Mp3 CBR 320 kbps / Flac (tracks) / 24bit-96kHz FLAC (tracks) | Country, Americana, Singer-Songwriter | 39:01 | 92 /243 / 770 MB

\»This is the kind of songwriting I\’ve always been drawn to,\» says Jeremy Ivey. \»The perpetual motion, the intricate melodies, the sprawling arrangements. This album is the real me.\»
Juxtaposing raw, unflinching personal reckonings with jaunty, buoyant melodies and rich, kaleidoscopic production, Invisible Pictures, Ivey\’s third album for ANTI- Records, is indeed a revelation.
Though the songs are rooted in a 21st-century swirl of chaos and uncertainty, the record is, at its core, an undeniably feel-good collection, one that refuses to surrender to the existential ache it so artfully captures. Instead, Ivey embraces the sheer, uigated joy of creative freedom and sonic exploration here, drawing on everything from flamenco and classical music to vintage indie rock and British Invasion tunes to craft a passionate, transcendent album more riscent of John Lennon or Elliott Smith than anything coming out of Nashville these days. In fact, Ivey left Nashville altogether to complete work on the album, relocating to Los Angeles to finish things off with the help of legendary Smith collaborator Rob Schnapf.
\»When you sing a melody in your head, you can either put three chords around it or nine,\» says Ivey, who plays one of Smith\’s hollow-body guitars on the record. \»This , I aimed for nine.\»
Ivey\’s never been one to shy away from a challenge. Born in San Antonio, he suffered a stroke and was diagnosed with cerebral palsy during infancy as a result of his birth mother\’s battles with drug addiction. Doctors at the said he would likely never learn to walk or talk, but Ivey proved them wrong, managing to become not only a gifted multi-instrumentalist, but a profoundly poetic writer, to boot. As a child, he was adopted into a strict Christian family, one that prohibited him from listening to popular music and kept him sheltered from much of the outside world through rigorous homeschooling. Understandably, questions about who he was (and who he was meant to be) dogged him throughout his adolescence, and as soon as he was old enough to set out on his own, Ivey hit the road in search of himself. For years he traveled the country, picking up work in kitchens and playing guitar to make ends meet. In Colorado, he lived in a tent; in Boston, he struggled with homelessness. Eventually, the road led to Nashville, where he began collaborating with (and eventually married) another searcher named Margo Price.
\»When I met Margo, she was working as a waitress in a bar,\» recalls Ivey. \»We were both stuck with these dead-end jobs and shared the same dream of getting out and traveling the world making music.\»
After years of sweating it out in the bars and honkytonks of Nashville, the pair finally experienced the breakout success they\’d dreamed of in 2016, when Price\’s critically acclaimed Midwest Farmer\’s Daughter (largely co-written and recorded with Ivey) took the country world by storm. Ivey followed suit in 2019 with his own critically acclaimed solo debut, The Dream and The Dreamer, which NPR hailed as \»modern, indie[and] super-cool\» and Rolling Stone likened to \»Mutations-era Beck.\» Ivey\’s 2020 follow-up, the pointed and ly Waiting Out The Storm, was similarly well-received, with The Nashville Scene declaring that it \»deconstruct[s] the ills of the day—among them racism, xenophobia and the growing wealth gap—with a critic\’s precision and a poet\’s compassion.\»

1. Orphan Child (3:57)
2. Trial By Fire (2:54)
3. Keep Me High (3:39)
4. Downhill (Upside Down Optimist) (4:04)
5. Grey Machine (3:00)
6. Phantom Limb (4:40)
7. Empty Game (4:11)
8. Invisible Pictures (4:27)
9. Black Mood (4:17)
10. Silence And Sorrow (3:56)