“Obsolete”, the follow-up to Eric Barao's 2013 debut album, will be out on April 2, 2019.
The new album features guest appearances from power pop icons
Roger Joseph Manning Jr. (Jellyfish, Beck, Imperial Drag) and Mike Viola (The Candy
Butchers, The Major Labels, L.E.O.).
Once again working with three-time Grammy Award-winning
recording engineer Ducky Carlisle, Barao has aimed for a more nostalgic production
style that takes it's cues from the Magical Mystery Tour / White Album period of The Beatles,
but updates it with modern guitar sounds and some very 21st century lyric writing.
Working largely in '60's stereo' (every track panned hard left, right or center), Barao and his
bandmates have layered pianos, harpsichords, vintage organs and Mellotrons with hardhitting
Queen-style guitars, orchestral instruments and tight vocal harmonies to form a lavish
collage of everything that was good about power pop of the 1960's and 1970's. However,
some modern production tricks help to make it all leap out of the speakers in a way that few
records of the time could achieve.
The best compliment you can give to the record is: it's pure fun and joy
to listen to it. This will be on heavy rotation or the next weeks.
Barao's 2013 debut album, which was produced by power pop darling Bleu, earned him
extensive praise in the press, and landed on more than a dozen 'Best of 2013' music critics'
lists across several countries, including the United States and Japan.
In the early 2000's,
his previous band The Cautions released two albums and played throughout the Northeast.
For more information or to buy the album, visit his website:
ericbarao.com (get it on CD, digtial or exclusive USB-Stick with bonus stuff)