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On a small corner lot in southeast Portland, Oregon, Jeffrey Martin holed up through the winter recording his quietly potent new album Thank God We Left The Garden. Long nights bled into mornings in the tiny shack he built in the backyard, eight feet by ten feet. What began as demos meant for a later visit to a proper studio became the album itself, spare and intimate and true. Recorded live and alone around two microphones, Jeffrey often held his breath to wait for the low diesel hum of a truck to pass one block over on the busy thoroughfare. During the coldest nights, he timed recording between the clicks of the oil coil heater cycling on and off.Martins fourth full length album, Thank God We Left The Garden comes out on Portlands beloved Fluff and Gravy Records Nov __. He produced and engineered it himself, recalling, There was a magic quality to the sounds I was getting in the shack with these two cheap microphones, some lucky recipe of time and place that allowed my voice and the way I play guitar and the shape of these new songs to come together with the kind of honesty I was craving.So much has happened in the world since the release of his previous album One Go Around (heralded by No Depression as the poetry of America), and Jeffrey has filled the time doggedly, but happily, touring the US and Europe, watching it all unfold in a stream of small town conversations and city sprawl. In a moment where depth is so often traded for the instantaneous, where tech billionaires are building rockets to escape the planet, where the dead-eyed stare of artificial intelligence is promising to existentially upend our world, and where divisiveness in our culture is breeding delusional levels of certainty, Jeffrey Martins new record feels like a hopeful and fully human antidote.There are holes in all the side walls where the wind it brings the rain inAnd the gold crowns have been found out to be brass that has been paintedThere are holes in all our bibles where we make secret compartmentsTo hide the broken treasures we smuggled out of the garden -Quiet ManThe sounds feel warm, close, and refreshingly real, all held up by the richness and rare candor of Jeffreys voice. Production is restrained mostly to his guitar and vocals, with flashes of classical guitar for a tumbling wash of melody and low end color. Martins voice sits high above everything, reaching into new melodic territory that goes beyond his earlier work. I feel like Ive only just learned how to sing, Martin said. Like Ive been chasing this record since my very first recordings. I wanted to really see what I could do, just my guitar and my voice and little else. I dont think it was conscious. I think maybe it was a reaction to the pace of life these days. The churning news and entertainment and politics and violence of it all. I needed to know that even in this day and age, just a few simple ingredients still hold up.
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