Premiere: Brad Byrd wanders on back to starry-eyed ‘1982’

The thread lines of any given Black Mirror episode speak to the here and now in beautifully tragic and brutal brush strokes. “Nosedive” examines our obsessions with being liked on social media; while the award-winning “San Junipero” scrapes up the layers of an afterlife fated to the cloud. Through each griping tale, the human existence, as rich and intoxicating it can be, is filtered through a sour, stunningly-harrowing lens. Los Angeles singer-songwriter Brad Byrd feels such a sharp blade of technology with his new single, “1982,” premiering today.

The song, ebbing with a moon-like shimmer, opens up almost immediately into a Back to the Future-esque daydream. “On a left coast, just up ahead, was a sign post / That lit up brightly / Take me back to 1982,” he sings, guitars sliding together in a wash of creamy hues. “With my Atari, back before the change / It was starry / I was in the garden / Back there, back in 1982,” he reminisces of the glory days. Silvering acoustic guitar peeks through the electric guitar’s taloned fingertips, and the drum kit rumbles and lurches ahead as he works his way into the present. “I was lying to myself / I was trying to control everything,” he later mourns the loss of authentic connections, now lost to ruin. Alongside John Kimbrough (bass, electric guitars) and Matt Pendergast (synths, Farfisa, piano), Byrd cracks the skin of a sorrowful and riveting stretch of highway.

“1982” is both troubled and hopeful, permitting Byrd to steal way in between the layers of art to be replenished. “The song is basically a nod back to simpler times when the world was more analog…before the internet and digital took over,” he explains to B-Sides & Badlands. “It starts with me at the age of nine, when things were more innocent and my creativity had no boundaries. Then, we fast forward to the present, where modern-day me stops to reflect on all the ways our lives have changed o r been influenced by the internet and modern digital age. The nostalgia for the past makes me realize that finding comfort in art helps me navigate through the fast-paced and ever-changing technical world.”

When Byrd’s voice fades as the sun at dusk, lush reds, oranges and pinks overwhelming the senses, the production morphs into a monstrous wildebeest storming across the desert and gasping for air. The landscape might change, one of a few assurances in this life, but the resolve to remain unaffected only swells. Byrd’s perceptions and attachments to the world operate in much the same fashion. In combing hard rock and alternative country, the two lines blurring the deeper you go in his catalog (three previous full-length records), he rises as one of the most compelling storytellers working the scene today. “Like the majority of my other songs, this one was a riff and melody first and materialized out of a sort of trance while I was playing guitar. I recorded the first pieces on my phone and then fine-tuned them over a period of time before hopping into the studio,” he says. “If I had to call out an influence for the majority of my songs, it’d probably the human condition and how we all can reflect and learn from our own lives.”

“1982” is another sturdy notch to his forthcoming new record, Phases, out May 3.

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