Current Joys - East My Love (Colored Vinyl, Olive)

East My Love, the resplendent, country-tinged 12th album by

Current Joys, feels familiar. It's meant to: the 12 songs contained within dive

deep into the rich folklore of the American West to tell time-worn tales of love

and trauma, heartbreak and spiritual renewal. Cast with a warm glow and

finding Current Joys' Nick Rattigan tapping into some of his lushest, most

high-fidelity production to date, it's the kind of album that listeners could see

themselves within, and, hopefully, keep close when they're most in need of

reassurance or escapism. For Rattigan, though, it's all that and more.

Rattigan wrote East My Love alone in the woods in Tennessee, with

no cell reception and nobody in earshot for miles. Composed three years

before Love + Pop, the experimental pop double record he released in 2023

and 2024, the songs on East My Love felt too raw to confront until he felt well

and truly out from underneath the cloud that had been cast over him.

Rattigan describes the songs as "landmines" that, for years, threatened to

upend his carefully balanced mental state. "They were just triggers that

would put me back in this emotional space, and I think eventually I got to a

place where they were more comforting," he recalls. "That's what I hope

people find out of the record - a solace from any anxieties or depressions."

Along with that comfort comes pain, and an acknowledgement

that any repair requires some level of breakage. Lead single "California Rain"

acts like a tableau depicting Rattigan's attempt to escape his demons, it's

placid lyrics a distinct counterpoint to the tidal-wave production: "Isn't it nice

to get away?/Clearing my head up, and dull away the pain." It speaks to the

album's constant coin-toss between peace and chaos: "It's like you're trying to

outrun your demons, but at a certain point, they become your friend, and you

have to walk alongside them," says Rattigan. "I feel like you don't know that

when you're suppressing them - when you're hiding them in the rain."

At other points, Rattigan is more clear-eyed about the struggle of

moving forward; opening track "Echoes of the Past," aches with the

acknowledgement that inner peace exists on a knife's edge. "The world won't

end in blazing fire and brimstone - it'll end from us not learning from our past

and our mistakes," says Rattigan.

There's a purity of catharsis that runs through these songs; written

without pretense, they take base human needs and desires and fit them into

a grander tradition of American songwriting that takes in everything from

Willie Nelson to Bright Eyes. True to that, many of the songs on East My Love,

due to their outside-looking-in perspective, play like standards. "Slowly Like

The Wind," a simple voice-and-guitar ballad, finds Rattigan reassuring his

subject that "slowly like the wind" he'll help push them in the right direction

in times of need. On "Lullaby for the Lost," which feels parched but

emotionally rich, he urges himself to remember that "we'll get oh so strong"

despite the depths of despair he may be feeling in the moment. "I wanted it

to be very slow and meditative, with these punctuations of lyrics that I really

wanted to stick out. I felt like it was powerful to accentuate certain points, but

also let the song be a meditative comfort to the listener." That comfort can be

traced back to an idea at the core of East My Love that Rattigan describes

simply: "Everyone deserves peace of mind."