Search - Josh Weinstein :: Love & Alcohol

'Josh Weinstein is a philosopher/poet who happens to play amazing piano (plus whatever else he can get his hands on). With Love & Alcohol, Weinstein may fully establish himself in critical circles as one of the most talented songwriters the US has to offer. This is the sort of performance that gets considered for awards.'
--Wildy's World Reviews, February, 2009

Bukowski-esque lyrics evoke a a slide-show of anonymous strangers haunting the dark corners of a midnight city. Shades of front-porch-blues and field-gospel co-mingle with Waitsian jazz and folk harmonies. Rock guitar pulses over upright bass. A single voice calls out over slow-burn blues piano while a trumpet plays from the next room.

In intimate settings, Josh Weinstein often has his drummer show up empty-handed and 'play the room'--use found objects to bring immediacy and unpredictability to the performance.

It's no wonder Weinstein's second release, 2006's Brooklyn Is Sinking, appears on 'Best of...' lists at WFUV and npr.org. A scholar, educator, studio pianist and performing songwriter, Josh Weinstein has emerged as an important voice in contemporary pop composition.

After a one-year performing hiatus, Weinstein is back in force with his strongest album yet, Love & Alcohol, released Spring 2009 on RandomLogo Records.

Love & Alcohol is a street's-eye view of love and everything after, written and edited in the late-night hours, fueled by too little of the former and too much of the latter.

Basic tracks were recorded on Valentine's Day, 2008, with an electro-acoustic four-piece ensemble that included journeyman 'Roches' bassist Paul Ossola and 'Songs from a Random House' drummer John Bollinger. Overdubs throughout the year when/wherever Weinstein could get a microphone in front of friends and colleagues--everyone from guitarist G.E. Smith to cellist Erik Friedlander to organist Clifford Carter.

The spare production incorporates found-object and non-trap-kit percussion, engineered soundscapes, and nontraditional, non-beginning-middle-end song structure.

Yet at its core, L & A is fundamentally a blues album--an in-the-cracks, off-center, idiosyncratic look at life lived somewhere between Love & Alcohol.