Music In the Time of Coronavirus, Part II
Mark and I released Sirens Go By on February 11, 2021. This 8-song LP is the second installment of our pandemic collection we are calling "music in the time of coronavirus."
The title song, "Sirens Go By," is the song on the album most obviously about the pandemic. Several others only allude to the pandemic.
The third track, "Twilight's Last Gleaming," is a song in the vein of "Careful Now My Son." "Twilight's Last Gleaming" is more an elegy for the "Great America" I had grown up believing in--a common childhood delusion for white privileged kids of my generation--whereas "Careful Now My Son" is more a warning of what the current America, an even more delusion-addled and autocratic America, could become.
I initially divided up the releases of "music in the time of coronavirus" according to the style of the songs. "Careful Now My Son" was the only song done in a true Americana style. Our upcoming release is the six-song EP Stuck Inside. All six songs are done in an edgier or rockin' style (electric-guitar-based rather than acoustic-guitar or piano-based). All of the songs on Sirens Go By (and our fourth project we added to the collection, Variant Blues) are done in a more typical Anders/O'Bitz singer-songwriter style--an Americana style, yes, but not as much so as "Careful Now My Son."
If you'd like to do a deep dive into what I mean by our singer-songwriter style, I made a Spotify playlist of the best of our songs as a duo, 2018-2020. You can also hear the Anders/O'Bitz songs I released as a solo artist from 2003-2011 on the Spotify playlist at the very bottom, most of them done in this style too.
Eric Anders - February 20, 2021