Mapache
Swinging Stars
Innovative Leisure
18 August 2023
Four albums in four years is unheard of these days, but for Mapache, it’s just business as usual, yet Swinging Stars is slightly unusual at the same time. Having established separate residences, Sam Blasucci and Clay Finch found themselves writing material on their own and bringing it with them when they decamped to Panoramic House, an artists’ retreat in Marin County, where they recorded the album with producer/engineer/bass and pedal steel player Dan Horne and drummer Steve Didelot. As a result, they have created more songs apart than ever before.
While Blasucci and Finch have separate writing styles, what hasn’t changed is the west coast vibe pervading Swinging Stars. The widescreen People Please features Blasucci on piano, and Didelot’s drums blaze a hole through the track. At the same time, the lyrics create a call for common sense, “Insecure and sexually repressed/ Religious men in my life/ I sail away through worlds of mine/ That don’t revolve around thoughts in your mind.” The call is to live your own life as you see fit rather than depending on others who may not have your best interests at heart.
A country weeper, Sammy Boy features Blasucci on Dobro and vocals and slowly unfurls a tale of love gone wrong. “Sammy Boy/ What happened to you?/ You drive them away/ Too sad and too blue.” The slow pace and mournful piano only add to the woebegone tale. The following song, Home Among the Swinging Stars, features Finch on flute and offers a wordless note of hope while sounding like an outtake from Jefferson Airplane’s Coming Back To You.
Working remotely with their hero David Rawlings who contributes acoustic guitar, Where’d You Go looks at the subtle ways that things change as we grow up and grow old. Strains of guitar and dobro fill the air while Blasucci and Finch sing, “Summer came and autumn fell/ And the earth spun as it will/ There were things we had never seen/ It seemed our hearts could ever fill.” Yet by the song’s end, the preciousness of each moment becomes more clear. Things that they thought they had known are now not quite so simple.
Befitting two friends who have played together for years, Finch and Blasucci seem to have a way of leaning into the sweet spots of each other’s work, finding those moments where music and magic join forces creating shapes and sounds revealing their truths. While living in different cities, Mapache have found the musical moments that bind the two as a band. Swinging Stars continues to deliver sheer west coast magic.