(BROOKLYN, NY) -- It's been a busy year for New Jersey native, Anthony D'Amato. The singer-songwriter's supergroup, Fantastic Cat, recently released their debut album and he's about to release his first full-length solo album in six years. At First There Was Nothing is due out on October 21st via Blue Rose.
Hailed by Rolling Stone for his “folk music raised on New Jersey grit,” D’Amato headed west to record At First There Was Nothing, relocating to American Fork, Utah, for sessions in the autumn and winter with celebrated songwriter and producer Joshua James. Bristling with joyful energy and piercing insight, the record emerged from a period of intense change and renewal, and the growth is palpable, with sprawling, unpredictable arrangements accompanying some of D’Amato’s most gripping and incisive lyrical work yet.
Drawing on everything from hazy ’60s soul to rootsy ’70s rock and roll, the songs are loose and playful here, even as they grapple with faith and trust, mortality and loss, resilience and regret, all set against sweeping sonic backdrops every bit as epic and rugged as the landscapes that inspired them.
D’Amato, who just performed on CBS Saturday Morning with Fantastic Cat on August 13th, will be on tour in Europe in August and September supporting Keb’ Mo’ and will tape an episode of NPR’s Mountain Stage October 2. More US dates will be announced soon.
Along with Anthony, Fantastic Cat includes acclaimed songwriters Don DiLego, Brian Dunne, and Mike Montali from Hollis Brown.
On Anthony's Facebook page, he explained how the album's cover came to be, "I was riding the California Zephyr through the Utah desert when I took what turned out to be the cover photo for the new album. The shot wraps around onto the back in a way that I hoped would feel like the jacket of an older book you might find in the library.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but the photo encapsulated so much of what this record ended up being about: motion, change, distance, possibility. The foreground is a blur as the train speeds over the cracked and arid ground; the cliffs in the background are so far away that the whole world seems perfectly still around them.
I was chasing a sweeping, wide open sound with these songs, one that tapped into a fantastical vision of the west that was as much imaginary as it was real, and that’s what I saw through the lens in that moment. It’s an alien landscape, harsh and desolate, yet eerily beautiful. If you look closely you’ll see the reflection of the Amtrak windows on the back cover, a reminder of the push and pull between immersion and observation, between the authentic and the artificial.
I photographed all the artwork for this album myself around the state of Utah, where it was recorded. It’s the first time I’ve really combined my love of music and photography in this way, and it’s been a real joy for me, so I’ll share more of the images and the stories behind them in the days and weeks ahead until the album’s out Oct 21. In the meantime, I highly recommend pre-ordering a signed, limited edition, orange swirl vinyl so you can see all these photos big and close up the way they were meant to be shared."
Born and raised in New Jersey, D’Amato first rose to international attention with the 2014 release of The Shipwreck From The Shore, his New West Records debut. Inspired in part by time spent studying with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Irish poet Paul Muldoon, the album garnered rave reviews on both sides of the pond, with NPR inviting D’Amato for a Tiny Desk Concert and lauding that “he writes in the tradition of Bruce Springsteen or Josh Ritter," and Uncut proclaiming that his songwriting "echoes with early Bob Dylan."
D’Amato followed it up in 2016 with the Mike Mogis-produced Cold Snap, which earned him his first national TV appearance along with an “Artist You Need To Know” nod from Rolling Stone, who hailed his writing as “folk music raised on New Jersey grit.” In 2017, D’Amato released a collaborative EP titled Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, which raised more than $10,000 for refugee aid, and in 2019, he returned with Five Songs From New Orleans, a stripped-down acoustic collection that earned continued praise from Billboard to Rolling Stone. Along the way, D’Amato toured extensively across the US and Europe, sharing bills with the likes of Ben Folds, Valerie June, Keb’ Mo’, The Felice Brothers, American Aquarium, and many more.
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