After taking a break from song- writing for more than a dozen years to work full-time as a hospice social worker and found the label Exit Stencil Recordings, Brandon Stevens delivers us a meditation on the commonplace complexities of aging that arise as youth fades further in the rearview and middle-age unexpectedly approaches.

Named in homage to a birth year, Bicentennial Blue is a candid and honest reflection on the personal shortcomings, readjustments of expectations and dreams, and the loss of relationships through disappointment, distance and death, that one acquires with age. Through the collaboration with producer/multi-intrumentalist, Riley McMahon (Spottiswoode & His Enemies), Great Father manages to incorporate the standard indie-folk band instru- mentation into a darker, more atmospheric, and more haunting presentation than typically found in the genre.

Bicentennial Blue has a decidedly overcast aesthetic, wrapped in the warm tones of nostalgia for the ‘70s a la Tobias Jesso Jr., and delivered from a perspective of someone who lives with loss close at hand. At times reminiscent of Mojave 3’s dream/country/folk amalgamation; at others, an Elliot Smith / Conor Oberst-like approach to lyrics and vocalization; and at others, just approaching things straight up like Pink Floyd and letting it breathe.

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