After twelve years, Beachwood Sparks are back with another mellow delight

Different bands and different artists go through different cycles. Some appear, burn brightly (or don’t), and disappear even faster. Some continue to soldier on deep into their senior years. And yet, there are those that come, you don’t hear from them for quite a while, and then suddenly re-appear to the joy of their fan base, no matter how large it was.

Los Angeles mavericks Beachwood Sparks appeared in the late nineties, coming up with a series of brilliant, sophisticated take on late sixties/early seventies Southern California sounds, that the late Gram Parsons aptly coined as ‘Comic Americana.’ Two initial albums (Beachwood Sparks, 2000 and Once We Were Trees, 2001) immediately created a hardcore base, that had to wait until 2012 for their next album offering, The Tarnished Gold, and another twelve years for the next, current one, Across The River Of Stars (2024), although they did release three equally high-quality EP’s through the decades - Make the Cowboy Robots Cry (2002), Desert Skies (2013) and Beachwood Deluxe (2021).

There are probably a number of reasons for such breaks, a bit of rest from touring, other projects like Gospelbeach, or the fact that co-founder Josh Schwartz passed away.

Yet the three core members Farmer Dave Scher, Chris Gunst, and Brent Rademaker, along with their off-and-on collaborators never truly went away, and on the evidence of the new album, only grew stronger.

Why did Beachwood Sparks go on hiatus?

Talking in a recent interview about the last twelve-year hiatus, Scher notes, "Yeah, I don’t know what took us this amount of time. I do know there was an amount of time that went by since we were super active. Once that time ended, and there were several years off, the band resurfaced for air. So by that time, it established a precedent of some advice to the youngsters, which is, ‘Don’t break up. Just veer off until you forget what you were mad about.’”

No matter, where that time went away, Beachwood Sparks seem to be in full form on the new album, making that bond between the music that is decades old with the current times as strong as when they first started out.

The nine tracks on the album, from stat to finish have that sort of timeless quality that makes it undistinguishable when it was recorded, yesterday, or decades ago. It most probably has a bit to do with the band’s deep understanding of what went on before them and served as their inspiration, as well as with their songwriting and instrumental capabilities, with those delicate vocal harmonies on all of the tracks topping the cake.

It just makes you so glad that Scher and co. never gave up.