Good Day Noir Family,
welcome to Edgar Allan Poets indie music corner. A space dedicated to the best new artists and bands we find around the web. Today’s feature artist is Gregory Rhodes and his album The Dearly Departed and the Recently Returned.
The Dearly Departed and the Recently Returned is Gregory Rhodes’ Album
This album really intrigued me above all for its compositional originality.
The chord progression of these songs is never obvious or banal. The harmonic intuitions are of great quality and the rhythmic and dynamic variations keep you focused and continually surprise you.
Surely we are dealing with an artist with a great compositional experience behind him.
Gregory Rhodes has managed to put his artistic vision into music. He mixed various genres and made them coexist in perfect balance. I would call it “psychedelic folk rock” even if this music is difficult to label as it is very original.
I liked all the songs of The Dearly Departed and the Recently Returned, the production is impeccable and the performance and interpretation are masterful.
An artist who composes quality music that I would recommend to everyone.
The Dearly Departed and the Recently Returned is Gregory Rhodes’ Album Out Now!
Mature and Unique!
The Dearly Departed and the Recently Returned is Gregory Rhodes’ Album
Gregory Rhodes describes his music as “Allegories from Underwater.” Rhodes is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist musician and producer based in Anchorage, Alaska. His first solo album, The Dearly Departed and the Recently Returned, evokes an encompassing, cinematic experience. Layers of electric and acoustic guitars, mandolins, symphonic string arrangements, and heavy drumming surge in saturated rhythms. Narratively, the album follows a refracted hero’s journey into the underworld, splintered into multiple personas. Beginning with the elegiac first track, “The Dearly Departed,” it depicts a lifetime in reverse, ending with “The Recently Returned” as a rebirth into a strange new consciousness.
The album showcases a blend of sonic influences drawing from a wide range of genres, from 90s acoustic grunge, to 1960s minimalism, lo-fi experimental alternative, and orchestral classical music, as his lyrics drive deep into an emotional psyche, exploring hidden worlds, shifting narratives, archetypal imagery, and religious longing.
The album was recorded in Anchorage, where Rhodes functioned as recording engineer, producer, and performer—he played every instrument on the album. Rhodes teamed up with Grammy-nominated audio engineer Geoff Stanfield, who mixed the album in Seattle. The album was mastered by Ed Brooks of Resonant Mastering (Fleet Foxes, Minus the Bear, Cursive) in Seattle.