Singer Songwriter Folk guitarist Gregory Alan Isakov has taken time away from working on his follow-up to 2018’s Evening Machines to record and share a new live video for “She Always Takes It Back”. The soft-sounding original ballad was the final track on Isakov’s 2013 studio album, The Weatherman.
Set in a darkened studio setting, Isakov and his solo acoustic guitar guide viewers on a gentle ride through the 2013 original with the use of his fingerpicking style and trademark melodies. Isakov has made a career out of those subtle but heartwrenching melodies, and he shows he hasn’t lost any of his abilities even with all this time away from performing.
Isakov was scheduled to embark on a run of spring and summer tour dates last year, in addition to dates supporting the Zak Brown Band, but those shows never ended up taking place with the arrival of COVID-19.
It makes all the sense in the world that Gregory Alan Isakov owns and tends a farm on Boulder, Colorado’s outskirts when he’s not touring. He’s a man who appreciates the peace of mind one finds only in nature; “Nature is a reference point for sanity, I draw a lot from it, just like every other living thing,” he mentioned in an interview back in 2016. You get the sense of his ideology listening Evening Machines, his latest album, a piece of work written in the language of the natural world. Isakov strikes as too humble to claim fluency in that language, but he’s well versed enough. Environmental imagery peppers the album, from the earth beneath us all the way up to the galaxy. “Those bright crooked stars, man they’re howlin’ out,” he muses on the record’s closing track, “Wings in All Black.”
The sky is a recurring image throughout Evening Machines, as seen in the title of “Wings in All Black,” the lyrics of “Caves” (“I used to love caves / Stumble out into that pink sky”), or the lyrics of “Dark, Dark, Dark,” where he sings about Maria, who’s “got wings, she’s got legs for the sea.” Maybe Isakov has destinations in mind other than the open plain; maybe he’s a drifter, or a bit of a loner. The album cover hints at the truth, depicting Isakov keeping vigil among fields of grass, staring ahead at a gathering storm, but even so he remains an elusive, almost capricious figure. He likes his quiet, and he’s clearly prone to reflection, but in Evening Machines he finds himself at home, contemplating his past and present in modest spirit. It’s an album of small intentions with a grand sweep, intimate and boundless at the same time.
Singer-songwriter Gregory Alan Isakov’s new album, Evening Machines, showcases his emotionally evocative songwriting style; rich in narrative detail and beautifully contemplative.
Isakov was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He and his family immigrated to the States in the mid-1980s and settled in Philadelphia. As a teenager, he began touring and moved to Colorado to study horticulture. He self-released his debut album in 2003, and he’s built a following on a series of lush, honest, ethereal songs that embody modern folk, influenced along the way by Leonard Cohen and blues-folk musician Kelly Joe Phelps. Over the years, Isakov’s songs have appeared in a number of television shows. His songs often have atmospheric, cinematic qualities and while placements in shows like Girls, Californication and Rectify have served his career well, the recent use of “If I Go, I’m Goin” (from 2009’s This Empty Northern Hemisphere) on the final episode of the new Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House is a perfect example of how Isakov’s sense of narrative and quiet intensity can elevate a visual medium.
The video for “San Luis,” a cut from Isakov’s newest album. It’s a mesmerizing, sprawling road video beautifully shot by director Andy Mann, who filmed it with his fellow video and photography colleagues, Keith Ladzinski and Chris Alstrin.
Isakov had this to say about the song:
“I started this song in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado, a place I often draw from when writing. The song followed me around for about a year and finished itself in California, on the central coast. Andy called me soon after I had returned to Colorado and said he was shooting a short film about artists and wanted me to meet him at Great Sand Dunes National Park for a few days. Any chance I get to hang out with him, I’ll take. He, along with some other National Geographic photographers and friends were traveling the Southwest, documenting the artist’s process. We camped a couple nights and talked about writing, photography–and got caught in a gnarly sandstorm, our tents blowing away in the distance. It was a surreal and beautiful few days.
I reached out to Andy a few months back, to ask if we could use some of the footage for a video for the song. I wanted to make sure the landscape that we had experienced together made it in. I loved collaborating with him; he really is a master at what he does.”
The photography for “San Luis” is wondrously expansive and moody. It seductively captures the wide open sky above the Great Sand Dunes National Park, as well as the land and wildlife found there. The video opens on a shot of morning breaking, before following Isakov in his camper through the park. A campfire roars. A spectacular night sky twinkles brilliantly. As a banjo gently strums, Isakov’s pensive guitar pushes the song into stirring solitude.
“Weightlessness, no gravity. / Were we somewhere in-between? / I’m a ghost of you, you’re a ghost of me. / A bird’s-eye view of San Luis”
Simply put, the video for “San Luis” invites you in to a place that you never want to leave.
Very proud to announce the release of our new studio album, Evening Machines, available October 5th. A lot of love and care went into this one, and we are so thrilled about how it came out. Listen to the first single, “Chemicals,”
The South African-born troubadour’s first album of originals since 2013 adds an array of new textures to the hushed-indie-folk template he perfected on “Big Black Car” and “The Stable Song.” Lead single “Chemicals” pits the singer’s Zach Condon-esque croon and airy falsetto against faint string drones that recall his 2016 collaboration with the Colorado Symphony; “Caves” mixes electronic static, wordless harmonies and heavily reverbed instruments for an intoxicating rush, one of the few moments where Evening Machines hints at “rock.” But Isakov largely sticks to dreamy, hypnotic soundscapes like the layers of feedback on “Powder” or the reverse effects and ghostly vocals of “Where You Gonna Go” beautiful collisions of acoustic instruments, Isakov’s soothing vocals and otherworldly noise.
Chemicals, the first single from the new album “Evening Machines,” available October 5th.
Our new studio album, “Evening Machines”, will be available October 5th! We recently released a second single, “Caves,” .
I wrote this song with my dear friend Ron Scott, from Austin. He came up to visit me, and we were wandering around the farm and going for these long walks through the hills around Colorado. Ron and I spend a lot of time being quiet. He’s one of those friends that reveres silence as much as I do. We share a similar world where we write from. Some songs are about a story, a conversation. This one is more about the places they can bring you. And that love for silence.
Our new song “Caves” is now available From the forthcoming album ‘Evening Machines‘
Chemicals, the first single from the new album “Evening Machines,” available October 5th.
The Fat Angel Sings 