Karen Jonas is Sustained by Imagination in 'The Southwest Sky and Other Dreams'

Karen Jonas has announced the impending arrival of her fifth album, The Southwest Sky and Other Dreams, for August 28th.

The album will work with small-town settings in the American Southwest as its  backdrop and focus in on the contrast between alluring dreams and ambivalent realities.

Jonas comments:

“It's amazing that our brains are capable of sustaining this whole existence of imagination … of these dreams and goals and ambitions. But sometimes that's enough. Because sometimes the action isn't really critical to get you through the day.”

Whereas most of Jonas' previous releases were recorded live, the new album was put together in her home studio with producer EP Jackson. The Southwest Sky and Other Dreams also marks Jonas’ first recording with a settled band, comprising longtime guitarist and musical partner Tim Bray alongside ‘The Seths’ (bassist Seth Morrissey and drummer Seth Brown).

In songs like “The Last Cowboy (at the Bowling Alley)”, we're going to encounter "the beer-stained memories of a faded local hero years after all his friends moved on", while in “Out In Palm Tree Paradise”, Jonas turns autobiographical, recalling her "entrancement and ultimate disillusion while wandering the Mojave Desert with a beau".

We'll also get Pink Leather Boots” about a trucker "daydreaming at a strip club" and “Farmer John”, taking in "a broken marriage punctuated by a wife’s empty threats".

The title for the album is taken from the track “Maybe You’d Hear Me Then” that relates:

“You’re working some nine-to-five/Making plans for some better life/The Southwestern sky and other dreams you’ll never find.”

The Southwest Sky and Other Dreams Tracklisting

1. The Last Cowboy (at the Bowling Alley) 
2. Out In Palm Tree Paradise 
3. Tuesday
4. Pink Leather Boots 
5. Maybe You’d Hear Me Then
6. Be Sweet to Me 
7. Farmer John
8. Barely Breathing
9. Better Days
10. Don’t Blink Honey

Here's Karen Jonas recently channeling some very relevant Bob Dylan: