Lavender Diamond Release First Album in 8 Years Now Is The Time out Today via Petaluma Records |
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December 4, 2020: Today, Lavender Diamond, the trio of Becky Stark, Steve Gregoropoulos and Ron Regé, Jr., released their first album in 8 years Now Is The Time out now via Petaluma Records. Now Is The Time was written and produced entirely by Lavender Diamond, and mixed by Tucker Martine at Flora Recording & Playback in Portland, OR. The album features contributions from Nathaniel Walcott (Bright Eyes), Sasami and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame guitarist Josh Klinghoffer. Stream / Download Now Is The Time: Watch the lyric video for "This Is How We Rise": The album has been embraced by BrooklynVegan, NPR's All Songs Considered, Pitchfork, Stereogum, and many more. In their winter 2021 print issue, BUST reviewed the album and said "the album weaves acoustic rock, electronic and orchestral pop seamlessly into their own unique sound" and proclaimed "now's definitely the time for this soul-soothing, musical magic." "Right before our current storm of catastrophe these songs came pouring in to us. These songs of healing for a world in crisis," explains Becky Stark. "Crisis holds profound opportunity for healing and transformation. Now is the most powerful time we have ever known to transform our world and to build justice, peace and prosperity for all by living in harmony and with love for the earth, embodying the wisdom of equality and respect for all." The band captured the core of the album in just two days, relying on gut instinct to guide their every move, and while the material was written well before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the result is a particularly timely, vital collection, one that couldn’t have come along at a more necessary moment. "I came to this realization that there’s medicine in the music itself," says Stark. "It can lift people up and heal them and point them toward transformation, and that led me to this tremendously powerful need to start writing and recording again." Back in the studio for the first time in years, Stark and her Lavender Diamond bandmates tapped into their old chemistry almost immediately. Though much had changed for each on a personal level (Stark, for instance, often found herself holding her three-year-old daughter in her arms while recording vocals), the group’s creative bonds proved as durable and potent as ever. Regé, a gifted illustrator and graphic novelist who has contributed artwork throughout the band’s history, laid a subtle yet solid foundation for the record, adding weight and body to Stark’s airy performances, while Gregoropoulos put together the album’s ornate chamber-folk arrangements, coordinating the remote recording of each orchestral part during quarantine and assembling them all into a cohesive whole. |
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