Every Star In Rockingham County [LP]

Dogwood Tales - Every Star In Rockingham County [LP]

Though heavy and personal in its lyrical content, the album was born out of a spirit of naivety and experimentation that breathes lightness and excitement into the music. Pedal steel chords and delicate harmonization between Ryan and Grim — who've at this point been singing together half their lives — accompany jamming power pop drum lines, tasteful guitar licks, and wistful video game soundbites. Dogwood Tales speaks in a vocabulary previously unexplored in earlier works, unafraid of showing as much reverence for iconic fast food and video game characters as they do their grandmothers and local basketball legends.

The humming electric guitars over beds of pedal steel and earnest lyricism find the album in dialogue with indie rock's current lo-fi country romanticism, paying homage to revered American songwriters in the footsteps of Townes Van Zandt, but ultimately taking listeners through uncharted territory — a ride through Rockingham County, the tight bond of four friends coming of age in a rural Virginia town, and a digital age where loneliness is far too prevalent.