New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Lawyer-turned-novelist-turned-songwriter Mary Strand's debut single, "Act As If," harkened back to the power pop of the 1960s. With Strand's second single, "Different Kind of World," she moves into 1970s rock, drawing on influences like the
Eagles and Three Dog Night.
Both singles will be included on her debut album, Golden Girl, which will release on June 23, 2023.
In conceptualizing, recording, and producing the album, Mary Strand has worked closely with Ryan Smith of
Soul Asylum and The Melismatics and Mark Wade of The Melismatics. According to Strand, "With this album, we wanted to explore different music eras, but within the framework of the songs I naturally write." She adds, "We started with a catchy, danceable, mod sort of 1960s pop-rock sound, but "Different Kind of World" moves into the next decade, when guitars got more distorted and beats got heavier, but songs still had lush harmonies."
The singer-guitarist produces those harmonies on "Different Kind of World" with the help of Ryan Smith and Mark Wade. Strand and Smith also play guitar, Wade adds bass and a much-loved gong, and Jack Strand - Mary's son - plays drums.
As both a novelist and a songwriter, Mary Strand tells stories in which her worlds of fiction and reality tend to blur. As she puts it, her novels "contain fragments of real people and events in my life that I toss into an imaginary blender and then pour onto the page." She says her songs are simply a more compact version of that concept.
As with all of the songs on the Golden Girl album, "Different Kind of World" explores themes of love, but each song offers a different spin on it. The spin of Strand's second single, she says, "is the universal theme of love that's mutual but unspoken, let alone acted upon, so it's filled with yearning and internal drama." She laughs. "You might call it a totally annoying type of love."
"Different Kind of World" will be released on all streaming platforms on February 24, 2023. Strand will celebrate by playing it live with her band, Dodging Potholes, on Wednesday, March 1, at their debut at the
Driftwood Char Bar in Minneapolis.
