Description
Satellite Blvd is the fifth full-length studio album by the American singer and songwriter John Austin, independently released by Austin in 2008. The album was produced by Bret Hartley.
Hailed as “everything good about modern pop/rock music” by Performing Songwriter Magazine, John Austin has recently released his sixth solo effort, Satellite Blvd. The album, a decade in the making, takes the listener on an Americana-based twilight tour of a landscape strange enough to call our own, and further solidifies Austin’s gifts as a diagnostician of the contemporary zeitgeist. The album kicks off with «Cover Your Tracks», a barn-burner addressing unaccountability: “Steal it if you cannot pay/ Shear the sheep when they kneel to pray/ But if there’s a heart that you must betray/ send a basket or bouquet.” Placed at the heart of the album, Satellite Blvd.’s title track can be seen as a traffic circle, not only in the literal sense of its oft repeated refrain (“You got me driving around…”), but also as the thematic hub from which the album’s lyrical roads begin. «Blessing in Disguise», a lyrically playful yarn, depicts a narrator whose plans are blessedly frustrated by everyday reality: “See, I made a wrong turn, but I’m glad I did/ ’cause soon I’ll have a beautiful wife/ She had love to give to losers in life/ and I was a loser in life/ Because of you, it was a blessing in disguise.” Austin has always had a knack for keeping his lyrical addressees tantalizingly ambiguous. This remains true on Satellite Blvd., most noticeably in «Sunday Song», a lament for an unnamed love whose identity seems ever-changing: “This world is heartsick from the beginning/ Man, it’s a dirty trick to call it sinning/ It’s like the sound of a siren ringing in my ear/ Sunday ain’t what it used to be around here.” On the album’s other tracks, Austin addresses a variety of themes, from temporality and objectification to love, grace, and reconciliation. And though the tour down Satellite Blvd. reveals many dilapidated sights, the listener finds at road’s end a trajectory of hope. The album was produced by Bret Hartley and – in addition to Austin and Hartley – includes musicians Brandon Bush, Paul Barre, and Keith Perissi. [Image, September 2008]
> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/satellite-blvd/709542175)
CD tracklist:
01. Cover Your Tracks – 3:16
02. Our Day In the Sun – 3:30
03. Nowhere With You – 4:12
04. Satellite Blvd – 5:16
05. Thumbelina – 3:34
06. Free From Sorrow – 3:51
07. Blessing In Disguise – 4:41
08. Living In the Past – 2:51
09. Sunday Song – 3:59
10. Rainmaker – 4:31
11. Lead the Way – 2:52
Note: Available at Bandcamp: https://johnaustin.bandcamp.com/album/satellite-blvd
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