Flashbacks & Polaroids isn’t just an album—it’s a map, a memory box, a slow dance between the then and the here-and-now. It’s a reminder that music, like people, rarely leaps from past to future in great dramatic arcs. Instead, it evolves—patiently, thoughtfully—gathering echoes of old songs and shaping them into something quietly new. It’s what happens when you take the familiar and remake it for a new age.
With Blind River Scare, that journey feels effortless, weaving dust-blown country threads through a fabric of modern roots-rock, not reinventing the wheel but letting it roll forward on its own terms. It’s not the sound of a genre being turned on its head—more like one moving into a higher creative gear, taking in the view, finding fresh ground without losing sight of familiar roads.
And just as the music bridges time, so do the stories it tells. These are songs where characters carry their pasts like old luggage—scuffed, heavy, full of tattered tales—and yet keep walking. There’s reflection here, a little regret, and plenty of raw honesty. It’s about lives caught between motion and memory, about places that change yet somehow stay the same..
“Carousel of Postcards” sets the scene perfectly, a lilting country-rocker that muses on the memory and memorabilia found in those strange and slightly sad, seaside gift shops, but also the unadorned honesty and a reminder that you can’t move forward if you are constantly looking back. “The Moral Higher Ground” runs on an infectious groove and explores the idea that everyone who is in the wrong always sees themselves as being in the right. You can almost hear the indignation and surprise in the voice of the song’s antagonists as the police lead them away. It is best not to get involved, seems to be the message. The title track sees a man recalling the same mistakes and habits that characterised his two previous failed marriages as he potentially heads into a third.
Blind River Scare has always made an interesting sound, part Americana, part rootsy rock, part folk storytelling. The music is always great, but it is the biographical nature of the songs, the relatable characters and their recognisable stories that speak the loudest. And in the end, Flashbacks & Polaroids isn’t about where they’ve been or where they are we’re headed. It’s about the in-between—the long, winding road where real stories live.
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