New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Singer, songwriter, and memoirist, Zoe FitzGerald Carter, will release her newest LP, Before the Machine, on June 7, 2024. Featuring nine original Americana songs tinged in folk, jazz, blues, and rock, the album was produced by Jeffrey Wood, mixed by Alberto Hernandez, mastered by Ken Lee, and recorded at Opus Studio and Alberto Hernandez Audio, in the singer's hometown of Berkeley, California.
The video for the first single, "Magic Pill," premiered via Americana Highways who raved, "this video captures, visually, the psychedelic underground theme of obsessive attractions expressed in the song. If you've ever been absolutely addicted to a person or something else, as there are metaphors afoot, this song will bring it all back - the thrill, the pain, the feeling of being wild. Zoe is onto something with this one. We applaud the new direction."
In addition to Zoe's acoustic guitar and vocals, she is joined on the record by drummer Dawn Richardson (4NonBlonds, Tracy Chapman), bassist Paul Olguin (Maria Muldaur), flugelhorn player Erik "Mr Tasty" Jekabson (John Mayer), keyboardist Greg Sankovich (Times 4), electric guitar/lap steel player Michael Papenburg (Petty Theft), violinist Lila Sklar (Joanna Newsom, Bjork), and vocalists Pam Delgado (Blame Sally), and Vicki Randle (Mavis Staples).
Written largely during the pandemic, inspired by memories of a pre-smart phone world, and serving as the album's thesis statement, the title track explores how technology has irrevocably altered our experience of time.
"Before the Machine is about the way technology, specifically smart phones, has changed how we participate in, observe, and experience time," says the songwriter. "We spend less time in our own heads — daydreaming, scheming, observing, and interacting with other people — and more time scrolling through our private internet landscapes. We have the world at our fingertips, but are more isolated and less connected than ever before. I'm not preaching a purist, anti-tech gospel, but I believe many of us feel a sense of melancholy and unease about what we have lost through technological innovation."
About Zoe FitzGerald Carter
Zoe FitzGerald Carter grew up in Washington D.C. where she began playing guitar and singing as a teenager. But while music was her first love, writing was her first career. A graduate of Columbia Journalism School, the songwriter has written for numerous national magazines (The New York Times, Newsweek, Vogue) and, in 2010, published an award-winning memoir, Imperfect Endings.
In 2018, Zoe released an album of original songs with her band Sugartown, Waiting for the Earthquake, and in 2021, Zoe released her first solo album, Waterlines. Ranging in style from folk to funk, the album featured an impressive crew of musicians and established Zoe as an exciting, literary lyricist.
Picking up where her last album, Waterlines, left off, Before the Machine further showcases the artist's vivid, literary sense of language while weaving a rich and confident fabric of folk, country, rock, blues, and jazz.
Zoe FitzGerald Carter will perform select dates in support of Before the Machine.
