Stream: Mapache, ‘Life on Fire’

Kevin Bronson on January 13th, 2020

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Mapache — the Echo Park duo of Sam Blasucci and Clay Finch — have been playing music together since their days at La Cañada High School. They make everything sound easy-schmeezy, from the way they mix California country, psych-rock and Latin music to their preternatural harmonies. The music on their 2017 self-titled album seemed to drift down a canyon like tendrils of smoke on a lazy summer evening.

The duo today announced that their sophomore effort “From Liberty Street” (named for their Echo Park neighborhood) will be out March 20 via Yep Roc Records, which last year re-released the duo’s debut. The new long-player was made with producer and bass ace Dan Horne (Beachwood Sparks, Cass McCombs, Allah-Las), with whom Blasucci and Finch play in the popular Grateful Dead cover band, Grateful Shred.

Indeed, the album’s first single “Life on Fire” recalls the Dead at their most laid-back. It smolders rather than blazes, but that’s the charm.

The songs on “From Liberty Street,” the follow-up to last year’s “LA Lonesome Cowboy” EP, were written mostly on the road. “A lot of these lyrics started coming together late at night in hotel rooms around the country,” Blasucci satys. “When you’re on the road traveling from place to place and you don’t have anything tying you anywhere in particular, you naturally start to look for some sort of spiritual home or stability, and I think a lot of songs on this record are searching or pleading for something more concrete and rooted.”

Matt Correia of Allah-Las directed the video for the new single.

||| Stream: “Life on Fire”