NEW SHADOWS/Gatefold Sleeve

Description

The fifth solo album by Jerry David DeCicca, New Shadows, is a gothic, pre-American, surreal, and ruminative literary meditation, featuring David Hidalgo and Steve Berlin (from Los Lobos), guitarist Jeff Parker, tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro (from Irreversible Entanglements), singer Rosali Middleman (Rosali), and sound composer/archivist Brian Harnetty. New Shadows culminates in corners where the inner and outer worlds collide, where tiny revelations can be found in the darkness of ourselves and our community: lost children, unheard prayers, insects, money, depression, romantic relationships, regrets, and Zoom funerals all become a lens for self-reflection. The production (by Don Cento and JDD) is modeled after DeCicca's favorite albums from the early '80s (Law & Order by Lindsey Buckingham, Afterburner by ZZ Top, Clues by Robert Palmer, New Sensations by Lou Reed), while the architectures and pathos of the songs lean more towards Warren Zevon, Townes Van Zandt, and John Prine—all of these record producers and songwriters are embedded in DeCicca's DNA. After seeing them, and in some cases meeting them after concerts, while his brain was still developing between the ages of 13 and 19. The virtual collaborators are the musicians who kept him company while he was isolated in his rural town, Bulverde, TX: Many Hands by Brian Harnetty, No Medium by Rosali, Who Sent You? by Irreversible Entanglements, Jessup Wagon by James Brandon Lewis, JP's Myspace Beats, and Suite for Max Brown by Jeff Parker, along with the discography of Los Lobos. New Shadows is less about DeCicca's new discoveries than it is about the haunting reminder of what has always been there.