Everyone’s got a story to tell. Sometimes it’s never seen among a million and one faces, sometimes a person simply fails to recognize its existence, or sometimes, such as the case with The Last Almanac, it sees itself drowning in a tide of louder voices, realizes its self worth, swims to shore, gasps for air, resuscitates the individuality that could have been lost, drives away from the beaches of conformity and into America’s heartland searching for something more than the illusion of greatness created by the smoke and mirrors of Los Angeles, such as the case with album “A Memoir.†Lyrically and musically, it’s an organic nod to Tom Petty, Bob Dylan and the Counting Crows, creating its own thunder without stealing the glory of the aforementioned. In 35 minutes, Josiah Rosen has harnessed the past four years of heartbreak, hardship and dreams lost with a lyrical bluntness full of wisdom and free of petulance. He doesn’t ask for sympathy because he is set free, or, as he sings with a raspy voice honed by countless nights in smoky bars as the former lead guitarist for Augustana, Rosen is “better off alone.†If Augustana harkened dreams of beachside barbecues and midnight drives past the Roosevelt Hotel, then The Last Almanac beckons to tell a story with more depth than the superficial plastic of the West Coast. If “All the Stars and Boulevards†was azure Pacific sunsets laced with Jack and Cokes, then “A Memoir†is a beer on the back porch overlooking the sunrise of lessons learned. The diamond of a track called “my former friends†begins with a majestic guitar boom, but reveals its sharp edges with a kiss off to people who, to Rosen, “mean nothing to [him] but the words in this song.†But friendship is not the only subject of The Last Almanac’s debut album. The mandolin-laced, Radiohead-esque track “pipestone†beckons to be burned onto a mixed album and sent to a former love. What hits the listener like a poignant lightning bolt is not the allusion to betrayal and adversity, but hearing the strength of Rosen’s vocal prowess and realizing had he not made this al- bum, his own story would have been relegated to the background. At the heart of “A Memoir†is Rosen’s story of coming home to wash off the grit of a dirty city, home to city of familiar faces, home to what is true. –Maniezheh Firouzi
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