Pre-order of Postcards of the Reckoning. You get 4 tracks now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.
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releases November 1, 2024
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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
CD + Booklet including lyrics & liner notes by Tris McCall
Includes digital pre-order of Postcards of the Reckoning.
You get 4 tracks now
(streaming via the free Bandcamp app
and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the
complete album the moment it’s released.
Download available in 24-bit/88.2kHz.
shipping out on or around November 1, 2024
Purchasable with gift card
$16USDor more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Vinyl! Includes full lyrics & liner notes by Tris McCall
Includes digital pre-order of Postcards of the Reckoning.
You get 4 tracks now
(streaming via the free Bandcamp app
and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the
complete album the moment it’s released.
Give me one more song
one more song, then I’ll go
Oh it’s not too much, no it’s not too much
give me one more song to go—
We’re about to lose
about to lose everything
that we ever won, that could ever come
give us one more song to go—
Make it loud and long
a silver string around our thumb
and he wasn't wrong, no he's never wrong
give us silver songs, purple songs
one more song to go—
Ain't he just what we told him to be?
Don't worry, messages received
He's met a thousand people, he's met them all
Thinks he feels better when he drinks
Poor Richard's got a house full of maids
All of them singing
Now we've all seen a father or two
Out there in the wild woods or in the streets
He might even look up just long enough to catch
The wide open eyes of his own boy
Poor Richard's got a house full of kids
All of them singing
How he longs to be all we told him to be
We don't have to worry, messages received
He's been removed from everything to taste or to touch
But his mouth's still moving, mouth's still moving
Poor Richard's got a head full of men
All of them singing
First thing in the morning
I found a little song
It scared me away for a year or so—
Close it in a locket
Shut it in a drawer
Sooner or later it's back in your palm—
Once I had a chorus
Once I had a psalm
Now I can't remember
The words but I'll sing what I know
Sing it for me
Sing it for you
La de da ..
Sing it for free
Now let it be true
La de da ..
Once I had a wife
Once I had a home
In April the both of them bid me so long—
Gather up your sorries
Stuff them in a song
Sooner or later we all sing this one—
Once I had that life
Once I had that home
And when they were gone
Then the dead reckoning had begun
Sing it for me
Sing it for you
La de da ..
Sing it for free
Let it be true
La de da ..
5.
Hold Me Out (or, Hold Me In) (feat. Elizabeth Ziman)
I've got a bright idea
I'm going out for a bit
I'll ride my bike to the top of the hill
I got a bright idea
When you lie about love
you can keep it from yourself
For a year or two, or three
Or the whole way home
When you lie about love—
I've got a bright idea
I'm going out for a smoke
I'll catch the wind coming down
Paterson Plank Road
I got a bright idea
When I lie about love
I keep it all to myself
Nobody move, nobody gets hurt
But I got blood in my hair
I got a bright idea
I got a bright idea
7.
Oh, Sarah
8.
The Times Old Rag
about
Notes on Reckoning, by Tris McCall
Right at the beginning of “Reckoning,” a key track on the album you’re about to play, the Jersey City folk-rocker Sean Kiely sings about the unswerving arrival of a moment of revelation. Kiely’s narrator — who is likely Kiely himself — is visited by a clear and brutal reality. Though he tries to hide it from sight, soon enough, it’s back in his bare hand. The language Kiely uses to describe this experience is spare, poetic, and elegant, because that’s how he always approaches his storytelling. But the thing he’s describing is anything but clean. It’s trouble he’s singing about on Postcards of the Reckoning, and no matter how beautiful the album sounds, or how light his touch, there's no disguising them. Kiely is showing us the dangerous dance of choices and consequences, and indicating, in his sweet, supple, gentle manner, that we will never outpace the repercussions of our actions.
And so he brings us echoes, song after song, of dangerous things past, and brings us, firmly, to the present moment — a lonesome, mournful clock-tick that contains all the decisions that led to it. It's the pained lover's parting on "One More Song," and the knowledge that no matter how sweet that melody is, there'll be no encore. It's there in the portrait of a mess of a family man on "All of Them Singing," and the recognition he suddenly sees in the eyes of the people closest to him. It's in the sad and solitary bike ride taken by the main character on the beautiful, aching "Bright Idea," and his admission that the threadbare lies he'd been telling himself about love and relationships had finally worn out. His protagonists have flown far, gathered speed, and coasted on their own momentum, but at last they've run out of sky. That's where we find them: banging up against limits that we all face, because we've put them there ourselves through our own behavior.
But if they can get through that moment — if they can accept the reckoning — they can be freed from what fetters us. It won't be easy, and it may not be pretty, but to Kiely and his characters, it's the only way to go. A reckoning means an honest self-assessment, and the longer it's forestalled, the longer these characters must exist in the calm, nebulous, weightless zone of emotional in-between-ness. Suspended animation is no way to be. Better to face the truth, no matter how uncomfortable, and get on with it.
Sean Kiely matches these stories of human beings in transition to music that is gentle but stubbornly unusual — full of pivots, compositional left turns, and unexpected note and chord choices. Though he and his collaborators never sound drilled, the tracks on Postcards are impeccably performed, evocative of folk traditions, but more often redolent of the waterfront at night and the strangeness of the Hudson County post-industrial landscape than it is of the woods. Kiely is pleasantly uncompromising: friendly and approachable, but sharp-toothed. Attitude hums and hisses in his grooves.
His realization of this sound has made him a favorite in his hometown. Since the release of Your Logo, My Logo in 2015 and It Sure Was Good in 2018, he's become a regular attraction on local stages large and small. As his reputation grew, so did his scope — and his curiosity. Kiely began to share his music with other scenes: first regionally, and then nationally. He entered into an aesthetic dialogue with like-minded artists from around the country. Postcards of the Reckoning (2024), his most varied and ambitious project, is the result of that exploration and that inquiry. Everything that endeared this artist to Jersey City remains here, including the adventurous melodies, the radiant harmonies, the smart, sharp-minded lyrics, the distinctive combination of open-heartedness and world-wise wariness, the heartbroken confessional storytelling, the nods to classic ‘60s pop, ‘70s AM gold, and ‘80s college rock recalcitrance.
At the same time, he’s made room in his mixes for everything he’s learned over the past ten years. He’s found clever ways to match his personal style to the styles of talented musicians from other regional traditions. Kiely’s reckoning might have left his narrators bruised by tragic happenstance, but just listen: they're reaching out past the moment of realization and desolation. In acts of bravery and faith, they’re readying themselves for whatever comes next, and the music reflects this pivot from introspection to engagement.
Postcards of the Reckoning was recorded at Kaleidoscope Sound in Union City under the supervision of Jeremy Delaney [John Agnello, Alessia Cara, Eddie Palmieri]. Kiely brought along musicians he’s worked with before, including frequent collaborator Jared Engel, a standing bassist who straddles traditional country and early jazz with poise, and drummer Bill Campbell, the rare indie rocker with enough subtlety and nuance to make him a favored session player for R&B artists.
But the familiar faces are only part of the tale. Much of the personality of Postcards of the Reckoning comes from its accomplished guests: musicians who have developed distinctive instrumental and narrative voices, and who, like Kiely, can’t help but sound like themselves, no matter what project they’re doing. Jean Rohe, an award-winning folk singer-songwriter whose omnivorous albums demonstrate an understanding of gospel, country, and Brazilian pop, adds her voice and her arrangement skill to kickoff track “Iris.” The delicate, subtly tough “Hold Me Out (Hold Me In),” a standout cut, gets a similar treatment from Elizabeth Ziman of Elizabeth and the Catapult, the beloved Brooklyn songwriter who draws with equal confidence from art pop and theatrical maximalism.
Then there are the ringers: multi-instrumentalist Abbie Gardner of the harmony-singing folk trio Red Molly, whose dobro contributes mightily to the ruminative atmosphere of the album, and Bobby Hawk, string arranger for Taylor Swift’s Grammy-winning acoustic sets, who adds folk-orchestral muscle to the anthemic “One More.” Mandolinist Maddie Witler of Della Mae is a constant presence on the set — an eight-stringed voice in counterpoint with Kiely’s own — leaping out of the track to add a fleet-fingered lead on “All of Them Singing,” and adding impeccable sonic decoration and campfire sway to throwback closer “The Times Old Rag.". A great downpour of empathy comes from violinist Minnie Jordan, inheritor of the Texas fiddling tradition and Kiely’s most relentless interlocutor. Sometimes she falls on these tracks like colored light through a filter, and sometimes she announces herself boldly, answering the singer with countermelodies, bolstering him on passages of emotional intensity, lifting him up, filling the sky with fire.
They’re all here to bring texture and depth to Sean Kiely’s writing, which is forthright and magnetic — even when it’s painful to hear. Postcards of the Reckoning chronicles a vexed period in the songwriter’s life, lived at a brutal time in the history of the world, right in the heart of a place as turbulent as Jersey City. The author of these tales has taken some hits. We all have. Remarkably, he hasn’t retreated an inch. Instead, he’s had his reckoning, and he's taken a step forward: toward the world beyond the Delaware and Hudson, toward brighter skies, toward other people. He never stopped singing. He hasn’t stopped following his muse down dangerous alleys. He’s still on his feet. And he’s surrounded by friends.
credits
releases November 1, 2024
Produced by Sean Kiely
Engineered & Mixed by Jeremy Delaney at Kaleidoscope Sound, Union City, NJ
Additional recording by Sean Kiely
Mastered by Nate Wood at Kerseboom Mastering, Queens, NY
Sean Kiely - Voice, Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar, Rubber Bridge Guitar, Osmose Synthesizer
Jared Engel - Upright Bass
Bill Campbell - Drums, Percussion
Minnie Jordan - Violin (1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8)
Bobby Hawk - Violin (2, 5)
Maddie Witler - Mandolin (1, 3, 6, 7, 8)
Abbie Gardner - Resonator Guitar, Voice (4)
Jean Rohe - Voice, Vocal Arranging (1)
Elizabeth Ziman - Voice, Vocal Arranging (5)
supported by 4 fans who also own “Postcards of the Reckoning”
Because she’s the best musician I know! I know her dad, who in my opinion was the best musician I knew until Abbie came along. If you know music she’s by far the most wonderful musician around. You need to hear her music.you will not be disappointed. uncleguy
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