Convinced Friend's 'Nowhere Songs' Is a Sun-Warped Masterpiece of Hometown Reckoning
Convinced Friend started as A.S. Wilson’s solo project. Nowhere Songs, out August 28th, is the sound of it becoming a band — eight tracks, produced by Bradford Krieger at Big Nice Studio in Lincoln, Rhode Island, and, per the band’s own notes, tracked largely live in a single day with minimal overdubs.
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: Mike Dantowitz on bass and Casey Belisle on drums get the benefit of the one-day approach: the low end has the slight forward lean of players watching each other rather than a click. Krieger doesn’t tidy it. The grit is load-bearing.
The Spatial Dynamics: Nate Halda’s guitar and multi-instrumental work supplies the twang running underneath what is, structurally, an indie rock record — Ben Salmon, writing Bandcamp Daily’s August country roundup, describes exactly that undercurrent. Under the Radar, premiering “On Fire,” heard “a swampy, heat-drenched collective chemistry, managing to sound shaggy and loose while careening along.” Ella Boissanault of Lady Pills sings guest vocals on that one.
Standout Performance
Wilson, writing about the Louisiana town he grew up in and left, a place the record frames as literally eroding. Salmon quotes him on “songs about the intertwining of people and places: bitterness and hope, resignation and resilience.” “Oilfield,” “Boulder,” and the closing “Little Life” carry that weight without ever announcing it as a theme.
Why It’s Certified
Eight songs, no filler, no label credited anywhere we could find — this is a record that exists because four people in Providence booked a day and meant it. The evidence base here is thinner than a Metacritic pile-up, and we’d rather say so than inflate it: what we have is Bandcamp Daily’s endorsement and Under the Radar’s premiere, both unambiguously admiring. Sometimes that’s the whole apparatus a great small record gets. Certified great.