Premiere: Stream Chad Price’s Soulful New Album “Chad Price”

By: Staff –

Chad Price.

If you were asked to describe the music of Chad Price’s self-titled sophomore album (out Jan. 27th) in three words, those words might just be, “grown folk music”…at least that’s how Price himself answers the question of what his music has evolved into since his 2012 debut album: “The music I’m making now has a maturity and sophistication about it that I haven’t had before. I’ve arrived at a place where I feel incredibly at home and at peace musically. I’m not searching for my voice. I’ve found it on this album.”

On the new album, which can be streamed via Spotify below, it’s evident that the guitar-toting, velvety-voiced, accomplished singer-songwriter has evolved out of his artistic adolescence and flourished into musical maturity.

The album boasts Price’s trademark soul-stirring and honest songwriting that has a cunning ability to cut to the core of its listeners almost surgically. Price also shows off his highly-developed penchant for guitar playing, as he shines just as brightly on the electric guitar, pulling off simmering solos in “Rise & Fall” and “Ragged Bones”, as he does on his more traditionally wielded acoustic. Price has proven on this album that he is not an artist that is content to sit still and continue to do the same old thing. As both artist and co-producer on the self-titled album, Price has evolved into a musical powerhouse who has brought his own concoction of r&b, soul, blues, and folk to the party that is yet to be heard. “It’s deep, it’s elegant, it’s gritty, it’s honest, and it’s got a ton of groove. It’s me”, says Price.

Much of the creative direction on this album is due to producer Da-Rell Clifton, who brought a wealth of creative vision, as well as artistic and technical expertise to the project: “Da-Rell has a way of bringing the most out in a song, whether that means leaving something out or bringing something in. He finesses things to the point where they are just right for what each song calls for. He’s a master of subtlety and a joy to work with”, explains Price. Clifton’s experience as a seasoned producer, drummer, and engineer can be heard and felt throughout the album, but most easily when you experience the raw grit of “Not Done Being Wrong”, or the infectious percussive mastery and groove on “You Don’t Know”.

The album delves deep and explores all the nuance that colours our lives; purpose, fear, victory, defeat, courage, love, pain, joy, loss, hope, recovery, and redemption. Thematically, it is all-encompassing and comes from Price’s examination of some deep and, at times, dark places within. “It is all of these things and how we respond to them that shape us as human beings. As an artist, of course it also heavily shapes my art. This album is a very honest representation of who I am as an artist and where I am currently as a person”.

On his second full-length effort, the soulful crooner gets up close and personal as he intends to take the listener somewhere: “I want it to be a transportive experience. I hope that after listening to this album from start to finish, you mentally and emotionally find yourself somewhere very different from where you were when you started it”. Price accomplishes this feat by leading the listener through a mosaic of musical worlds with sincerity and soul. Whether it’s a deeply introspective and hard-hitting song like “Ragged Bones”, or a jaunty southern-soul track like “Old Fashioned”, as a listener, you find yourself completely disarmed by the emotional transparency and unconventionally raw musical aesthetic as you willingly take this musical journey with Price.

This album backs away from the illusory studio-made lustre and instead prides itself on the sometimes imperfect, yet beautifully real and often forgotten act of musicians playing their instruments and playing them well. Authenticity is something that is written into the DNA of this album and lives in each and every song. “Having the opportunity to co-produce this album really gave me the musical autonomy and creative edge that allowed me to make the album that I originally set out to make. It is most definitely my best foot forward musically and something I am truly proud to release to the world and stand behind”.

Having penned some of these songs more than three years ago, Price has had a lot of time to perfect them. Now that they are forever crystallized as songs on the album, Price cannot wait to take them with him on the road in 2017: “They finally need to go have a life on their own outside of my own head. Once they are out in the world, they belong to everyone, not me anymore. That’s one of the greatest gifts and privileges that artists get to have, and I can’t wait to experience that again and share this special thing I’ve created with whoever will listen”.