Sylvie 
The new album from West Coast songwriter Ben Schwab picks up right where his short-form first record left off, digging deep into the AOR end of the ‘70s. He joins a growing contingent of artists who’ve got a hand on the lacquered sheen of pop that trawls through the Canyon, picking at folk and country with a measured hand. Quite a few of those contemporaries have hovered in Sylvie’s orbit, both in the past and here on New Season. Schwab’s been a collaborator with Drugdealer in the past, and the Sylvie umbrella brings in Sam Burton, Marina Allen, Sierra Ferrell, Courtney Marie Andrews, Alex Amen, Kacy Lee Anderson and more. Schwab proves he stands among the best of the Americana acolytes, turning reclined ease into an art form over the course of the new record. Jarvis Taveniere (Woods) returns to help behind the desk, and the band skips from their home studio setup through landmarks like Electric Lady and Abbey Road to achieve a sound that’s turns whiskey n’ honey harmonies into the the kind of songs that seep out of the tweed covered speakers on the kind of contemplative Saturday nights that turn into serene Sunday mornings.
The debut sketched out the framework for what would become New Season, a gathering of friends that started to dig their toes into the shag, but here Schwab and the band lock into the bittersweet core of the reel-to-reel romanticism of the ‘70s. Like his collaborator Michael Collins, Schwab approaches Sylvie as a kind of ethereal radio station, something humming along the ionosphere in perpetuity for those with the right kind of ears. Swapping through singers, but keeping the tone tipped towards wood-paneled perfection, New Season drapes a scarf over the lampshade and looks to soothe that unpalatable ache. Plaintive piano drives the record, a springboard for the record’s core of shimmering harmonies that play like sun dipping over the pacific. The record seeps into the skin, a classic dressed in linen and lament. It’s easy to slip on the signifiers of the ‘70s, but far harder to create something that feels like a lost piece of the puzzle. Sylvie solidly falls into the latter camp.
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