Chicago-based indie rocker Alan Zreczny and his band bluefront are still riding the Aftershocks following the release of their sophomore album this spring, including top track It’s Not Over Yet and its new video — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
Narrative poems set to spirited melodies, Aftershocks is a journey into the reverberation of emotional aftershocks enveloped in shimmering melodies and instrumentation deftly demonstrated by bandmates Jason Steele, Nick Kabat and Mark Burns. A lawyer-turned-singer/songwriter, Zreczny first picked up a guitar at the age of ten, having grown up in a house always filled with music and music lessons. His love for music and writing remained under the surface while he went to college, law school and grad school, and continued as he worked as both corporate in-house counsel and later at a law firm.
The thoughts about creating music were ever present: “I always thought of being a musician and writing songs as the most fulfilling modes of self-expression. And then, a terrible break-up happened.” Inspired, Zreczny started writing and hasn’t looked back since. Unless, of course, it’s for valuable songwriting supply, which is the case for It’s Not Over Yet.
“Looking back, things are a lot more clear,” he reveals, marvelling a bit. “Let’s just say I was in one of those cliche relationships where it’s quite tumultuous and there are more breakups and ‘on-and-offs’ than you can count, or even care to admit… Anyway, that’s what’s going on here. I just couldn’t see well enough to stop, and I couldn’t let go. I still believed (in the relationship) — or at least, thought I did. It’s funny, at least to me, because when you see this exact thing going on with a friend, it seems so obvious and you wonder what your friend is doing. All you can do is wait it out with them. Well, I think I discovered that it’s not so easy to discern the true state of affairs when it’s happening to you. This is pretty good evidence I was quite clearly in the midst of ‘it.’ I would like to say there was ‘no more,’ but… there was. The irony that in an arc of songs I wrote, that the title of one is Our Last Goodbye, which is about the same person in It’s Not Over Yet is not lost on me.”
Aftershocks was recorded at Electrical Audio by Scott Steinman, mixed at GardenView Sound Studio by Scott Steinman for Studiomedia Recording, and mastered by Matthew Barnhart at Chicago Mastering Services; it follows Zreczny’s debut The Arbor Sessions. Zreczny and bluefront have performed at Uncommon Ground, The Elbo Room, The Gallery Cabaret, The Red Line Tap, Old Town Art Fair, Subterranean, The House Cafe, and The Cubby Bear, among others, and appeared on WGN Radio and the Chicago Acoustic Underground podcast.
Watch It’s Not Over Yet above, listen to Aftershocks below, and keep up with bluefront via their website and Facebook.
