Idaho Falls – Concrete Prairie
This Los Angeles country-rock and pop band’s debut full-length is appropriately titled, as it’s got a city heart that gazes hard at mountain and desert. Raymond Richards and Heather Goldberg, whether alone, harmonizing or chasing each other, share the singing; Richards is the main writer, but he gets significant help from pedal steel player Greg Vincent. Give them points for variety, from the somber, gentle acoustic number “My Favorite One” to the bright, Golden State-rocking “California Day”, to the hoedown title track (with a ’60s psychedelic-pop interlude), to the pedal-steel-to-the-metal “Desert Rag”. The lyrics also stick, even when they’re mystifying (“Somewhere tonight, hundreds of horses died”). Often they’re much easier to decipher: “When you play the pedal steel/There’s nothing else that I can feel/But the sun of a sunny Southern California day.” Amen to that.