Led by charming piano melodies, Sometimes I Forget from Tex Crick hits the ear as easily as a bum hits a well-worn leather couch.
Tex Crick is an Australian musician you might have seen onstage with some of your favourites – including Iggy Pop, Alex Cameron, and Connan Mockasin to name a few – but he also produces some damn nice tunes on his lonesome.
The newest single from camp Tex is Sometimes I Forget, which has the honour of being the first song released on Mac DeMarco’s record label that isn’t one of DeMarco’s own tracks. It’s the first single from an album’s worth of tunes from Crick, which will come your way this March.
Sometimes I Forget is top-tier easy listening. The simple vocal lines and softly muted piano melodies echo a time when songwriting was simpler, when a positive outlook and a stringed instrument were all you needed to write a hit.
Live In… New York City is the name of the album Crick has on the way – not a live album, by the way, but rather with ‘live’ pronounced as ‘to live amongst’. It was recorded in the Big Apple while Crick was working as a piano repairman between tours.
The piano you hear on Sometimes I Forget (and indeed the rest of the album) is one he peeled from the streets himself, a fixer-upper that became an inspirational base for a collection of classic love songs he would soon write.
The album also incorporates a number of field recordings collected from around the busy NYC, from street ambience to chatter. Crick shared:
“During that time I was also visiting a lot of jazz bars. Some of the background noise and chit chat on the album was recorded while sitting at the bar using my handheld recorder under my jacket.”
It seems that in all ways, Tex Crick is a wonderful fit for the tick of approval from DeMarco, who himself cut his teeth making acoustic records in a DIY studio in Brooklyn.
It was back in mid 2018 that Mac DeMarco launched his own label, aptly named Mac’s Record Label. The only releases so far have been DeMarco’s 2019 record Here Comes The Cowboy and two subsequent demo albums, making Tex Crick the label’s first real signing outside of its founder.
Speaking about Crick and Sometimes I Forget, DeMarco shared:
“I’ve always loved the music he’s sent me and released over those years, and now I’m able to lend a hand in sharing his newest joint. I helped mix this record, and have heard it probably one thousand times at this point, and still love it.”
Live In… New York City is out March 26 via Mac’s Record Label / Caroline Australia. Pre-order your copy here.
