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(2022) Gerry Beckley - Aurora
Review:
Gerry Beckley, the illustrious singer, songwriter, performer and co-founder of legendary band America, release his fourth album for Blue Élan Records. Aurora is at once a look back on some of Beckley’s original influences – among them the triple Killer B’s of the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Bee Gees, with Chicago thrown into the mix – as well as a fresh start, a clean slate moving forward coming on the heels of last year’s critically and fan acclaimed greatest hits album, Keeping the Light On: The Best of Gerry Beckley. Recorded during the pandemic at Beckley’s two home studios in his dual bases of Sydney, Australia, and Venice, California, Aurora is an introspective album that takes stock of his life – past, present and future. The first single, “Friends are Hard to Find,” seeks to relieve the isolation all of us felt during the last nearly two years, with a hopeful, handclapping, crowd-sourced party atmosphere to provide the respite that music can offer in times of stress. Gerry acknowledges channeling the spontaneous creativity of his good friend, prolific songwriter Jimmy Webb. “This is a time of great reflection whether we like it or not,” he says. “If we treat this pandemic as the lesson it could and should be, this could be a moment for great growth, because even with the immense challenges we face, there is still hope.” As befits its simultaneous look back and forward, the songs on Aurora include “some old and some new,” unfinished demos and scratch recordings from as early as the mid-‘70s, along with tracks “started from scratch” over the past two years. New song “Tickets to the Past” marks the first time Beckley has co-written a song with longtime America partner Dewey Bunnell and it appears somewhere other than an America album. With America, who still perform more than 100 live dates a year, unable to fully tour during the last two years, Beckley turned to “my main hobby,” writing and recording almost 40 tracks, pared down to the 11 included on the album. Sequenced like a traditional vinyl album, with a Side 1 and 2, Aurora is the work of a lifelong performer who hasn’t stopped growing, personally and creatively, with a beginning, middle and end. “When you hold a mirror up to your life, it’s hard to control how much of your life is in that reflection,” he says. “I don’t want to say it’s about one thing in particular, I’d rather leave it more open-ended.
Track List:
01. Aurora
02. I Fall Down
03. Never Know Why
04. Tickets to the Past
05. Way to Go
06. Friends Are Hard to Find
07. Peace of Mind
08. Indy's Gatho
09. Aerial
10. Superscope
11. Tears
Media Report:
Genre: soft rock
Country: Fort Worth, Texas, USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
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