Original article: https://www.imaai.org/mia-suzanne-walker-is-contributing-a-color-to-indie-folk-music/

“Singin’ a song / Cardinal on the fence / Time on my hands / Since I, I don’t know when” croons Mia Suzanne Walker in the opening lines of her song “Passing Me By,” one of the ten comprising Suzanne’s Band’s new album Back to You, her every word echoing the emotion in the melodies behind her. For Walker, every verse is an opportunity to connect with the audience on a musical and spiritual level, and in her latest release Back to You, she rejects the very notion of adhering to one specified set of rules when it comes to making an evocative harmony all the more rousing. She’s following the beat of her own drum here, and exceeding the expectations surrounding the creation of a follow-up to her debut, Breathe.

Vocal harmonies are the undebatable centerpiece for every song on Back to You, but I wouldn’t say that they overshadow the instrumental bedrock of tracks like “Look Up,” “Don’t Give Up Yet” and “Fault in My Stars” at all; actually, the exact opposite. Walker wants us to understand the depth of the narrative in all of these songs, and by investing so much in the relationship between her voice and the backing band, she makes it impossible for us to experience a lyric without feeling the emotion integrated with the music as well. She’s as multidimensional a songwriter as they come, but she isn’t getting overambitious in Back to You – instead, she’s recording the kind of material that best suites her skillset.

There’s more instrumental contrast in “On a Good Day,” “Don’t Give Up Yet,” “I Almost Said I Do” and “Gonna Rise Up” than there was in the whole of the first extended play we heard from Suzanne’s Band, Breathe (released in 2018), and it would surprise me a great deal if I were the only critic to notice as much. If Walker was trying to redefine her identity with a multifaceted attack in Back to You, she essentially hit this one out of the park and then some, because from every angle that I’ve analyzed it, she seems to be going out of her way to make each element within her style of play stand out and affect the mood of any given composition as much as producers would her cornerstone attributes.

If you’re looking for the perfect mix of homespun, old fashioned country crooning and contemporary folk/pop aesthetics in a single cocktail, you’re going to want to add Suzanne’s Band’s Back to You to your record collection a lot sooner than later. With the assistance of her ably-chosen cast of supporting players, Mia Suzanne Walker is contributing a color to indie folk music that had been mostly absent from the genre in the early and mid-2010’s, and now that the 2020’s are finally upon us, I think we’re going to see her come into her own in ways that had only been teased in her early efforts. I’ll be keeping an eye on her growth, and I’d recommend music fans everywhere think about doing the same.

Clay Burton

Original article: https://mobyorkcity.com/back-to-you-lp-by-suzannes-band/

In the shadow of a ghostly wind, an acoustic guitar begins to play, the voice of one Mia Suzanne Walker not too far behind from its opening salvo of string melodies. This is “Write a Book,” an excerpt from the album Back to You by Suzanne’s Band, and it’s one of the better examples I can point to when talking about the experimentation its lead singer is toying with in her latest release. In her debut EP Breathe, Walker proved she could do some amazing things with the mic in her hand, but here, she takes her craftsmanship to a whole new level of accessibility.

There’s a lot of emphasis on the strings in the songs “Fault in My Stars,” “Passing Me By,” the percussion-powered “Don’t Give Up Yet” and “Wonder When,” and rightly so. There’s really no better compliment to the vocal that Walker is dispensing with ease from the middle of the mix in all four of these tracks, and though she arguably can make just as much magic with a piano melody (check out the harmonies in “Look Up”), she’s smart enough to know exactly which elements to pair with the particular singing styles she’s utilizing in Back to You.

The energy that I get from “Wonder When,” “I Almost Said I Do” and the title track is steeped in an unapologetically live format, leading me to think that these songs were probably created with Suzanne’s Band’s stage show in mind. I haven’t seen her sing in-person for myself yet, but based on the reception she’s got from her performances in the past, I can imagine that these new compositions will do very well with the current setlist she’s been working with on the road. She’s got a great presence, and in this kind of music, that’s as important as having lyrical substance – if not a bit more so, on occasion.

SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2xiCZHJIevKXif9mZo7TWR

Lyrically speaking, I think that Walker sounds a lot more vulnerable in songs like “Look Up,” “On a Good Day,” “Don’t Give Up Yet” and “I Almost Said I Do” than she ever has in previous recordings. It would be nice to hear her exploit the depth of her songwriting abilities more as the 2020’s press on, because at the end of the day, she has a grasp of melodic composing that is appealing to pop, country and folk listeners alike, which isn’t an easy combination of audiences to win over these days.

Fans new and old alike won’t want to miss out on this latest release from Suzanne’s Band this January, and with any luck, this won’t be the only set of songs that she issues before the year is done. Mia Suzanne Walker is following her heart with her music, and even if she isn’t using the commercial template that so many artists would in a bid to get fame and fortune, my gut tells me that the mainstream spotlight isn’t going to ignore her output for very long. She’s got the chops to do great things in this business, and she’s off to an excellent start in Back to You.

Nicole Killian

Original article: http://thehollywooddigest.com/suzannes-bands-back-to-you-in/

Bluesy swing and exotic melodicism of the richest variety come together to make one heck of a strong introduction to Suzanne’s Band’s Back to You in the opening bars of its first track, “Fault in My Stars,” and as the confident serenade of Ms. Mia Suzanne Walker begins to fill our speakers with unbreakably smooth tonality, it becomes clear that this full-length album is going to be quite the harmonious journey for anyone within earshot of its rhythmic melodies. More swaggering beats await us just around the corner in “On a Good Day” and the country flashfire “Passing Me By,” and with Suzanne herself leading the way, we’re soon lost in a misty sea of rhythm and rhyme definitely worth writing home about this January.

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/suzannesbandmusic/?tn-str=k*F

“Passing Me By” essentially marks the end of the big blues grooves in Back to You, as its neighbor “Write a Book” departs towards a folkier sound more akin to what we heard from Suzanne’s band in their Breathe EP. “Don’t Give Up Yet” is a traditional country song with a flamboyant rough edge, and considering its placement in the tracklist, I think that it’s the perfect segue into the second half of the album, and more specifically, the experimental folk/rock that Walker’s group will lay down over the next five tracks. There’s a great flow to all of the music here, and to be frank, Back to You is usually a pretty tough record to put down once you’ve pressed play on any of its ten inspired compositions.

The title track here is the most elaborate song on the album, but its arrangement doesn’t sound exaggerated next to the other material here. “I Almost Said I Do” is equally layered and difficult to pin down aesthetically, mostly because of its bluegrass-style beats and galloping acoustic guitars, but next to “Wonder When,” it doesn’t really demand a lot from Suzanne as a singer. “Wonder When” has a complicated lyrical structure that must have taken more than a couple of takes to perfect, but I think this vocalist was more than ready for the challenge. She might not have been ready for the complexities of a track like this one, nor those in “Look Up,” back in 2018, but she’s developed her singing style so much since then that recording more streamlined material would now sound rather underwhelming.

CD BABY: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/suzannesband1

Back to You’s last song, “Gonna Rise Up,” gave me chills the first time I listened to it, and in every time since, I feel like another piece of its artistic persona is revealed to me. This is a record that takes a couple of dedicated listens to really appreciate and fully understand, but if there’s any LP that I would tell indie enthusiasts to get their hands on before the month of January is over, this would probably be the first one I’d mention. Mia Suzanne Walker leads an elite group of musicians into battle and emerges with a victorious sound rooted less in boastful virtuosity and more in organic creativity, and while I’ve said so before, I’m even more excited to hear what she does next after hearing this latest album from her camp.

Garth Thomas

Original article: https://musicexistence.com/blog/2020/01/18/suzannes-band-releases-new-album/

In a passionate lead vocal that has become her calling card, Mia Suzanne Walker, driving force behind Suzanne’s Band, lays into the chorus of “Look Up” with as much strength as she can muster from behind the microphone, but as anyone who explores her new album Back to You will discover, she brings this kind of a moxie to every song she records. In tracks like this one and the rollicking “Write a Book,” Suzanne chases after enormous harmonies whilst creating a crushingly emotional, atmospheric instrumentation in the foreground that is perfect when coupled with her soft poeticisms.

“Gonna Rise Up” rounds out the tracklist of Back to You with a melancholic melody that lingers in the air long after the record has stopped playing, but for as anthemic a ballad as it is, it doesn’t minimize darker, more dexterous numbers like the deceptively simple “On a Good Day” at all. There’s a good balance of themes on this LP, and even when she’s playing to one strength over another (such as her sensational lead vocal, or a specific part in a harmony), Suzanne never sounds removed from the trajectory of her backing band at all.

“Passing My By” and “Wonder When” both take a lot of the fragmented ends from Suzanne’s Band’s first record, the Breathe EP, and pieces them together in a much more mature and refined melodicism than she’s exhibited in the past, and personally I think these two tracks show her progressing evolution better than most any others on Back to You do. She’s growing a lot as an artist, and in the last two years, I think she’s done more to improve her overall approach to composing and performing than a lot of her closest rivals on the left side of the dial (and the mainstream, for that matter) have.

PURCHASE LINK: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/suzannesband1

The country components of the Suzanne’s Band sound have never been as formidable as they are in “Don’t Give Up Yet,” “I Almost Said I Do” and the title track in Back to You, and I for one couldn’t be happier to hear them in this state. Suzanne is and always will be a country singer above all else, and though her music drifts into folk and rock territory more often than a lot of Nashville-influenced players’ would, I think this is what gives her such a distinct, and easily identifiable, sound and artistry.

From “Fault in My Stars” to the brooding “Gonna Rise Up,” Suzanne’s Band doesn’t let us down with their latest collection of golden ballads, mild bruisers and pop-friendly swing jams, and while I enjoyed Breathe, I don’t think there’s going to be any debate as to whether or not this is the more superior of the two recordings. Suzanne is playing with her heart on her sleeve in this album, and as long as she continues to produce music with as much of her soul as she clearly did here, she’s going to be an important entity in the American underground for the foreseeable future.

Justin Marshall