It’s been a pretty great past 12 months for Abbie Barrett.
The winner of Best Singer-Songwriter in the 2015 Boston Music Awards kept her momentum flowing, with relative ease, in the new year. In March she released one of our favorite video and song combinations of 2016 in “Take It In Stride”, and the following month she and her band cruised to the semi-final sweet-spot of the Rock And Roll Rumble. Barrett and crew have spent the past few months delivering on their promise as one of Boston’s best live bands, and just last week helped christen the new live music series at Hojoko and the Verb Hotel in the Fenway.
Now, it’s time for the proper release of a new album.
That Shame, which has an online release this week, contains eight killer guitar-pop tracks, was funded in part by a successful PledgeMusic campaign, and can now be streamed via their Bandcamp. It was recorded at Q Division Studios in Somerville, and produced by Ed Valauskas.
“This album feels like the culmination of a dream I’ve always had,” Barrett tells Vanyaland. “I’ve gone down a few different paths with songwriting, but That Shame embraces a basic fantasy (that I think any music lover has) of playing straight-up rock and roll. The songs don’t waver and neither does the band, and the tracks just take a more direct path than in previous albums. I feel like I’ve honored that little girl, way back when, who used to play fake guitar on a tennis racket and pretend to melt faces in the living room.”
Catch Barrett live and in action this Sunday, September 25, when they play the Anti-Gun Violence Benefit at ONCE Ballroom in Somerville with the Boston Rock Opera, Magen Tracy And The Missed Connections, and more, and then October 27 at Great Scott in Allston with When Particles Collide, Carissa Johnson, and Stars Like Ours.
