The third album from beloved Nashville indie rockers The Medium, City Life is the first they’ve produced on their own. Recorded in their homes with the help of a few friends (Johnny Hopson and George Rezek), this grassroots approach to recording captures them simultaneously at their most relaxed as well as their most airtight. Ironically, City Life presents the quartet sounding their most country yet – sonically embracing some of the musical territory of their hometown (“Ghost in the Garden”) as well as lyrically wrestling with the challenges of its rapid changes (“Sellout City”). Songwriter/singer/guitarist Shane Perry’s whip smart writing alwaysleaves room for the cosmic joke to wink right back, though – his delivery by turns sensitive anddeadpan. The band’s penchant for saccharine harmonies, hypnotic riffs, and earnest balladscohere everything into a uniquely relevant take on a classic 70’s rock sound. Inspired by theyearning refrain at the end of Harry Nillsson’s “I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City,” therecord envisions ‘city life’ as a call for a better world – a society driven by care over productivity; by community over profiteering.
The album’s buoyant title track outlines a journey toward rebirth: “It started as a song about my brother moving to Chicago,” Perry explains, “but it became a rebirth album – all the dread and excitement, a new path, and everything we’ll have to leave behind to go forward. It contains my ideas of people disillusioned, so they rebel, or cling to loved ones and simple pleasures, even if they happen to disappear.” While some of these stories are imagined, others are real – for example, “The Day Dale Died,” written after a chance encounter with a friendly NASCAR fan at the flea market. The mischievous psych-folk rocker “James Harvey” was inspired by a series of online posts between rival high school sports teams that co-writer / bassist Sam Silva recalled and shared with Perry. Nothing is too niche or mundane for The Medium to glean meaning – each funny anecdote signaling an attentive curiosity about the people that make up their own city lives.
The first record with co-producer, guitarist, and drummer Peter Brooks — the record two-step dances between his jazz-adjacent style and longtime band member Jared Hicks’ solid rock drumming. Metabolized through their decade-long friendships, each band member’s influences are rendered into a cohesive sound: whether it’s Silva’s love for Bon Scott-era AC/DC manifest in the riff he cooked up for “Golden Angels” or Neil Young’s spectral presence over the hauntingly beautiful folk ballad “Horse in Heart” (spurred during sessions for their last record, For Horses). “Everybody’s got a little horse in their heart,” Perry croons during the latter, “and it don’t matter who you are / you can be a superstar.” That little horse – that deep seated piece of wilderness tucked away within everyone – is what The Medium is so adept at honoring, lyrically and musically. City Life captures the sound of old friends who are committed to discovering new pathways forward – within their musicianship as well as within the world around them.
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