Oak Recommends: “San Luis” by Gregory Alan Isakov

If you aren’t familiar with this name then it’s likely that you will want to be from here on! To say that this South African born, Colorado based, farmer has working hands is an understatement. When not tilling the ground, tending the flock or harvesting his crops, Gregory Alan Isakov is busy song writing, touring with his band and building a creative community with other artists and poets such as Joe Pug, Kid Reverie, Reed Foehl, Covenhoven, Jeb Bows, Tyler Knott Gregson and a whole host of others.

His latest album Evening Machines follows his 2016 live album with the Colorado Symphony & comprises some of his most accomplished work to date; this haunting and resonant folk music borders on the term hypnotically beautiful and could easily sweep you through the album from start to finish without blinking or hearing a single word of Isakov’s pensive & powerful lyrics. Born out of a season of unprecedented anxiety, Isakov spent sleepless night after night in his home studio piecing together overwhelming feelings and secret thoughts into a shortlist of 40 songs, eventually whittled down to the album’s 12 tracks.

I highly recommend delving into this album, an artwork which feels almost like a magic trick. Deeply honest and broken confessions weave and lace themselves into the fabric of extremely romantic, tranquil melodies which serve to calm and soothe, and carry devastating lines like “Did I hear something breaking? Was that your heart or my heart?” which calls innocently from the depths of a song called “Chemicals”. Whilst in the track you’re about to play he laments “Weightlessness, no gravity. Were we somewhere in-between? I’m a ghost of you, you’re a ghost of me…”

Here’s the stunning official video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BJ7MDOmLPE(Song recommendation by Oak Ayling)