"I'm kind of a junkie for sad songs and ballads," says Bob Sumner, the younger half of Vancouver-based Americana outfit The Sumner Brothers. "As a teenager most of my friends were into hip-hop, but I felt pretty out of place rolling around suburban White Rock, British Columbia, pumping gangster rap." Sitting in his room with his headphones on, Sumner compiled downhearted mixtapes pulling together the more introspective songs of CCR, The Band, Led Zeppelin, Emmylou Harris. As he began writing his own songs, this innate attentiveness to songcraft and emotional understanding became a hallmark of Sumner's songwriting and aesthetic. In the years since, he's released five albums with The Sumner Brothers, blending sounds as disparate as Neil Young and The Dead Kennedys, but Bob Sumner's Wasted Love Songs (out January 25) presents Sumner back in the bedroom, attentive to the quieter recordings of his formative years. Helmed by the gentle intentionality of Sumner's voice and lyricism, this rare debut from a songwriting veteran expresses the timeless quality found in the melancholy of Townes Van Zandt, the atmospheric momentum of Tom Petty, and the prophetic restlessness of Bruce Springsteen.

On Laith’s debut record, ‘Lightning’, he carries us across state lines from LA to Arizona, Colorado to Espanola, Houston to New Orleans, Utah on to the Great Northwest, where he currently lays his head, dreaming of running these roads until the wheels don’t touch the ground. And his writing does just that. It burns along the asphalt until there’s none left. And that’s when Laith takes us beyond, on phantom track lines through the abstract geography of his mind. He flows seamlessly between railway signs and lost trains of thought. Like a true American surrealist.

Give me highways
Give me road signs
Peace of mind at a stop light
Where I noticed if I had to let you go
Then this road would never end
It’d just go onward into the abyss of a great life unknown
(from “Gentle”)

‘Lightning’ was recorded in two pieces over about 6 months in Portland, Oregon. Laith worked closely with Kevin Christopher, who engineered and mixed using three different studio spaces to create something loose and alive, but also deeply focused and highly intricate. The bulk of the album was made at Ruby Machine, a studio Kevin helped build, and the remainder was done at Trash Treasury and Heavy Meadow Sound.

The first sessions began with a highly experimental approach, in which Laith would write the song in the studio while recording. These sessions included Casey Klep Matson, Kevin Christopher, and Cooper Trail. This collaboration became the basis for Laith’s current backing band - The Texas Birds.

The later sessions began with finished material arranged song-by-song utilizing the aforementioned trio, as well as, a loose circle of wildly talented neighbors - Merle Law, Erik Clampitt, Jeff Munger, Carolina Chauffe, Sam Wenc, and Anna Jeter.

The result is a 12-track traveling companion for the wild-eyed western mystic drifting along the winding highway, pulling off for all the old haunts - love, money, and hysteria. It’s outsider country rooted in the Texas songwriting tradition; buzzing with the subtle hum of northwestern psychedelia. And with a voice that literally sounds like smokestacks and lightning, Laith takes the listener from bar room to bedroom and back again, cruising along the vibrant soundscapes of The Texas Birds. It’s a timeless sound laden with thundering pianos and padded with Rhodes and organ; dusty acoustic guitars and ghostly harmonies fade in and out of the ether; the spirited twang of the electric guitar and the raw wah thump of the clavinet squabble in the dark while the pedal steel takes to the sky; all held within the deep pocket of a dynamic rhythm section.

I’m from the city of smokestacks and lightning
(from “No One’s Ever Gonna Put You Away”)

This album is alive with hunger and humility, madness and mourning, love and loss, and the eternal coming-and-going of all things. A map dotted with lightning strikes. Marked with these moments of crystalized awakening and reflection. The songs carry you through a gentle landscape punctuated by this raw phenomena. A little bit lucky. A little bit lethal. Like mainlining magic with the voice of God. And, then moving on…

Lord knows, I’ve been broken & doused
Lightning, the only time I feel him
Lightning, lightning just shining in
(from “Ghost”)