Brooklyn Americana band Yarn’s new music on Born, Blessed, Grateful, & Alive reverberates with echoes of past classic rock and country from the 1970s and 1980s.
By Steve Horowitz
Born, Blessed, Grateful, & Alive is Yarn’s first studio album in eight years. The new music reverberates with echoes of past classic rock and country from the 1970s and 1980s with apparent sonic references to artists such as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, John Prine, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Dwight Yoakam, and Lowell George. These aural Easter Eggs deepen the record. One can imagine the conversation between the past masterworks and the new songs in a discussion about how to live a good life. The material frequently addresses serious existential questions with a wink and a smile. The album’s title says it all. We are all holy just by the fact of birth and need to appreciate that simple fact. How else can one cope with the absurdity of it all?
Some examples of musical connections should make this clearer. Tom Petty sang about having a heart so big it could crush this town. One could easily feel the overwhelming sentiment expressed of knocking down the walls between us on “Walls”. In the anthemic “Heart So Hard”, the Yarn bandleader Blake Christina declares that nothing and no one can touch him, whether it’s the death of his mother, his lover turning against him, or the betrayal by his only friend. The music echoes the Petty song, especially the chorus. Petty wanted to tear down what separates us. Christina proudly announces he puts up his own defenses. His everybody hates me exaggerations are meant to be overstated but believable. Mothers do die, lovers leave, and pals can be disloyal. The combination of an everybody in life will hurt you scenario works like a slip on a banana peel. The fall is funny, even as broken bones are not.