For the Birds: Country-tinged indie band Neighbor Lady celebrate new album at El Rocko Lounge

For most bands, the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 was a crushing blow to music.

However, Atlanta based alt-country indie rock band Neighbor Lady managed to make lemonade with the lemons life dealt them. Their new album, “For the Birds,” was just released on July 1, two years behind schedule and much stronger for the long delay.

Neighbor Lady formed in Athens, Georgia, in 2016 when singer/songwriter Emily Braden enlisted guitarist Jack Blauvelt to support her in live shows. Andrew McFarland (drummer for infectious Athens-based dance rock quartet Reptar) and other members followed to fill out the line-up. Their self-produced debut album, “Maybe Later” (2018) highlighted the heartbreaking country-western twang in Braden’s voice, her yearning, love-lorn songwriting, and the band’s haunted, reverb heavy guitars.

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In 2020, Neighbor Lady recorded their sophomore album with producer Jason Kingsland (Belle and Sebastian, Courtney Marie Andrews), but two weeks after wrapping up in the studio the world shutdown.

“It’s been quite the wait,” said McFarland of the new album. “We had finished recording the record in the two weeks before everything shut down. We had blocked out all this studio time and then were not at work for two weeks, and then went back to work and they were like, ‘Okay, we’re closed for maybe forever.’”

Rather than fret about it, Neighbor Lady saw the delay as an opportunity to make the record even better, taking time to add lovely little details until they shaped “For the Birds” into a Baroque-pop gem.

“In terms of the record it was definitely frustrating to try to finish this thing that we had started in the initial lockdown phase,” said McFarland. “But, once we had figured out how to continue working on it, logistically, it actually ended up being pretty nice because it allowed us so much time to tinker with it. We ended up re-recording about fifty percent of the record, if not more.”

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Delicate touches to the arrangements enrich the album throughout like field recordings of birds, orchestral French horns, trilling flutes, and melancholy cellos.

“That was something we worked in after the fact,” explained McFarland. “I think we wanted to lean in to it a little bit more. All the french horn stuff, that is actually played by my sister, that was all done in the initial tracking we did. Then once we realized we have pretty much an undetermined amount of time to work on the record then we went a little ham.

“Some of the stuff like the flute and the waltzy cello stuff on ‘Feel It All The Time,’ Jack played flute and I played the cello, but neither one of us know how to play either of those instruments at all. What’s on the record is pretty much the extent of our abilities.”

Of course, all of the strings and horns in the world are useless without beautiful songs, and Braden delivers in “For the Birds.” The twangy catch in her voice evokes a number of emotions on the album, from the dreamy, languid swoon of “Feel It All The Time” (which conjures the Film Noir-ish Bang Bang Bar from "Twin Peaks") to the upbeat, uptempo “Takin’ U 4 A Ride.”

Braden’s lyrics also touch on relatable, universal themes like anxiety, confusion, love, and friendship, but all drawn naturally from her own personal experiences.

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“She certainly writes everything,” said McFarland. “She’ll write the main structure and all of the lyrics. Then the rest of us come in and. I always term myself as less of a collaborator and more of an elaborator. I like being able to work with someone like Emily who can write these amazing songs and then come in and build a musical world around these songs and bring them to life. I think that’s something Neighbor Lady is really good at. I think our communication is really strong”

The final polish on “For the Birds” came when Neighbor Lady sent all of the music to be lushly mixed by Los Angeles engineer Noah Georgeson (Devandra Banhardt, Cate le Bon, Daniel Rossen).

“We are huge, huge fans of his work, so it was totally a dream to be able to work with him,” said McFarland. “He’s done so much stuff that we are huge fans of, but then looking at his discography, he’s done a ton of stuff over the years that are some of my favorite stuff. He’s done about six records that are in my top ten records of all time, especially from an engineering standpoint.”

“Something that we tried to communicate with the album, as well, is we wanted the record to sound like a band in a room, but then there would be these moments of a magical fantasy world wafting through the window, and then it goes back to just a band in a room again. Almost like magical realism. Noah Georgeson latched on to that idea and made it work.”

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Neighbor Lady are excited to finally celebrate the release of “For the Birds” with a string of live shows including an album release party at El Rocko Lounge on Friday with Jalen Reyes and Fauvely. Although you shouldn’t expect any Baroque french horns or cellos, Neighbor Lady look forward to sharing the new material with their fans.

“I think the live thing is definitely more rock and roll, for sure,” explained McFarland. “One of the things we try to do with the live show, and something I think we do very well, is try to communicate some of those [dynamic sounds]. It makes it really fun to perform because we have moments of really loud swinging rock and roll stuff, and then can turn it down to really intimate, soft attitude on a dime, which is fun for me coming from something like Reptar that is all cylinders all the time.”

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah GA events: Neighbor Lady debuts new album at El Rocko Lounge