FRIENDSHIP - Love The Stranger LP

Love the Stranger moves like a country record skipping in just the right spot, leaving its fellow travelers longing for a place they’ve only visited in their dreams.

Guitarist Peter Gill, drummer Michael Cormier-O’Leary, bassist Jon Samuels, and hawkeyed balladeer Dan Wriggins map out the group’s particular, breathtaking landscape and invite the listener to share in its glory.

The band also have an affinity for classic country singer-songwriters, and Love The Stranger finds them leaning more into those inspirations: Hank Williams, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, the activist folk singer Utah Phillips (a fellow Yarmouth native), who Wriggins dedicated a whole covers EP to last year. Love The Stranger is twangy and roiling and can be gritty, all while remaining extremely pretty.

Like its sprawling lyrical references, Love the Stranger’s production is both familiar and capacious enough for pedal steel, synth strings, airy folk guitar field recordings, and MIDI pad exploration to work in vital harmony.