For his fifth fully independent album, Pierce Edens has taken his singular voice back home to Western North Carolina. Edens recorded Stripped Down Gussied Up in his childhood home, which he stripped and renovated into a studio a few years back. Even the environment, thus, is an incarnation of the album’s crux. Listen to the track ‘Sirens’ below:
https://soundcloud.com/devon-4-1/sirens/s-51aV6?in=devon-4-1/sets/pierce-edens-stripped-down-gussied-up/s-zpLUn
He shared the following about the song:
Playing music for a living doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Your mother wouldn’t recommend it, and it’s kinda hard to explain why you don’t mind driving through the sunrise. Or why it gets hard to stay home. Or why, sometimes, one good line justifies a whole shitty year. Or how when you look at it closer you know you’re fooling yourself, and that you’re writing/becoming a cliche… and you still don’t mind as much as you should. Because you can’t stop. And you wouldn’t if you could. Odysseus lashed himself to the mast and abandoned all sanity in the pursuit of a perfect song. I haven’t heard that song, but I know that feeling. Sirens is about that.
Edens’ Appalachian roots are the glue of Stripped Down Gussied Up, an album that teeters between sonic extremes, between Edens’ present and sepia past. The result is a swirling tapestry of story and sound that swathes the listener then chills them to the bone.
Out on June 2nd, 2017.
Photo Credit: Max Ganly