Dark Lights Up is available for pre-order now, which includes an instant download of “Baby, Don’t Call. On July 14th, Mandell kicks off a 15-city tour that will hit Seattle, Salt Lake City, Denver, Chicago, Minneapolis, New York and Boston, among other cities. While there’s a great deal of love shown for country tradition throughout, there’s no denying the LP’s fresh, modern approach with such tunes as “Baby, Don’t Call,” a playful, bouncy number that wouldn’t have been out of the realm of possibility for Patsy Cline and a male harmony singer (in spite of the provocative line in which Mandell declares, “I’m a screamer, baby.”) The LP marries Mandell’s rich, textured vocals to vintage melodies and instrumentation. With that goal in mind, Mandell produced Dark Lights Up with longtime collaborator Sheldon Gomberg, recording it live at Gomberg’s Silver Lake studio in California in a mere four days. Hold em Strip em.
It made me want to de-clutter and strip away and make something simple that still sounded full and beautiful.” There aren’t a lot of layers, and the melody and his voice and the words were more beautiful for it. “I was really struck by how simple his production was, and how central his voice and how open the sound was on the record,” Mandell says of the left-brained genius behind other iconic tunes, including “Dang Me” and “England Swings.” “It was really organic.
