Since the release of their album “The Beautiful Liar,” in 2021, X Ambassadors has been working on new music. The band’s latest album “Townie,” released on April 5, is no different. Well, except for the idea that this is one of their more vulnerable albums.
The band, led by brothers Casey and Sam Harris, was started in 2009 when the Harris brothers wanted to start this journey of their careers. Casey Harris is the keyboardist, while Sam Harris sings lead vocals.
“Townie” is one of the band’s more vulnerable albums. It dives into the emotional power and nostalgic feelings that life can bring up and addresses different aspects of life. For example, the opening track “Sunoco” is an acoustic track about the youthful adventures that one might have growing up.
Universal Music Group’s team at 1824 held a press conference with X Ambassadors, where the band was able to talk about the process of creating the album.
“It had already started to kind of dawn on me that this was a record about upstate New York and about where we’re from and growing up there,” lead singer Sam Harris says about the album and its meaning.
The Harris brothers are from Ithaca, New York, and they were able to write this album while staying close to a studio that they had found. They stayed nearby for the duration of making the album.
The next two tracks on the album, “Smoke on the Highway” and “Your Town,” follow this same theme of the trips and journeys people could take in their younger days when they have the time and feel like it.
“Your Town” also touches on and pays tribute to influential figures in the bands’ lives. Sam Harris’ teacher is one of them.
Most of the songs on the album are broken down and raw. They’re acoustic as well, which fills the lyrics with different kinds of emotions.
In music, I usually go for the more acoustic and emotional types of songs, just because that’s what I listen to and can find myself relating a lot more to it sometimes.
Track five on the album, “Rashad,” starts with the acoustic flow of the first four songs, however, it changes to an electronic beat. I found this to be interesting because it was not an aspect of the song that I was expecting to have come out of this album, given the first four songs were more emotionally built on that acoustic guitar and light drum beat.
“(first dam)” is one of my favorite songs on the album. In any kind of music, track six always ends up being my favorite. This song is completely stripped down to the bone in the sense that there is only the acoustic guitar and the soft singing voice of Sam Harris.
“Fallout” and “Women’s Jeans” are the next tracks to follow in the album. “Fallout” incorporates more percussion into the sound rather than the stripped-down acoustic with minimal background accents. “Women’s Jeans” is another one of my favorite tracks on the album. The lyrics indicate that the song is about finding your sense of self in your life.
“Who am I now? What if I’ve changed my mind? ‘Cause I’m not who I thought I’d be. Still a teenage boy in women’s jeans. Trying so hard to be.” is the chorus of the song. Personally, this song is that self-discovery that may not have happened growing up. The song is meaningful in the sense that it could be one that a lot of people relate to.
“Half Life” is the first song on “Townie” that incorporates another instrument. This time the song adds a melodic layer of piano that gives the song a different feel. The song, which sounds a lot like the feeling of falling in love and becoming whole again, is so lyrically beautiful. It relays the idea that someone is living half of a life up until they meet the person they inevitably fall in love with.
“Follow the Sound of My Voice” is both a lyrically and musically vulnerable song. The song deals with Casey Harris’ blindness. Casey Harris has been legally blind since birth and the song touches upon that multiple times.
As mentioned previously, Casey Harris plays the keyboard for the band. When listening to the melodic melody lines of the tracks that have them, just know that is Casey Harris playing.
This song connects on a deeper level because not only does it tell the story of the older Harris brother, but it allows Sam Harris to express how he feels through his singing.
The final two songs, “Start a Band” and “No Strings” are two contrasts from each other, which is what makes them the perfect closers for this album. Something that makes the song “Start a Band” so different from the others is that while the rest of the songs sound as if they have just an acoustic guitar, this one sounds as if it has an acoustic-electric guitar, which is beautiful.
The song also brings upon the idea that, as the lyrics say, “There is nothing we can’t do. Maybe we should start a band.” These words are connected because that is what the brothers did 15 years ago. They started in 2009, and now this song on the album feels like it’s come full circle, an aspect that I found enjoyable.
The contrasting, “No Strings” is more acoustic, while the preceding song has a little bit more of a buildup to it.
The album has more of an acoustic style, which may not be for everyone, but it was something that I really enjoyed. There are not many acoustic sounding albums out there in 2024, with all of the technology that is available and accessible.
“A lot of the stuff was done live, and that was really really fun and it kind of took us back to the days- the early days when we were just four guys in a room making noise together and it was just very fun,” Sam Harris explains about the process of creating the album.
This is what I find certainly shows through in “Townie,” and it creates music that is beautiful, vulnerable and enjoyable.
