News

Joshua Radin Announces New Album

• 19th Jul 2012

Joshua Radin has announced the release of his fourth album 'Underwater' on July 30th. This new release finds Joshua working with an array of accomplished musicians, including Benmont Tench, Jim Keltner (Bob Dylan, John Lennon) and string arranger Jimmie Haskell (Simon & Garfunkel).

The title is nothing if not Freudian. Since childhood, doctors warned Joshua Radin – who, as a toddler suffered a punctured eardrum, that he ran a grave risk of piercing pain if he ever immersed himself in water. “I said, ‘Alright, I’m just going to live my life on land,’” he explained. That changed last year. He was penning Underwater in Los Angeles in near seclusion – an antidote to the last two years of being crammed on a tour bus with his band. And one day, he woke up and realized there was inspiration in the Pacific. So he bought earplugs and took the plunge. “It was mind-blowingly cool,” he says “Even when I’m sleeping in bed, I can hear my heartbeat. I never realized the silence one experiences underwater. My brain was totally free to come up with a melody line, and that’s where this album began, underwater.”

Underwater captures that feeling of surmounting fears, but it’s also a culmination of Radin’s love of the stage. Much of the album, co-produced by Radin and Kevin Augunas (John Brion, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros) was recorded at the storied Studio City, the once-ramshackle space that hosted Tom Petty’s “Damn the Torpedoes” and Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush” sessions. They captured single takes on analog tape, to give the work a more organic feel. “When you cut to tape, you record like you’re playing live. That’s why this album has more of a performance feel,” he says.

Radin will put Underwater’s timelessness to the test this summer, touring throughout the world.