Lush Second Full-Length from Throwback Singer/Songwriter Inspired by the California Country-Rock Scene of the Late-’60s/Early-’70s and Produced by Shooter Jennings (Tanya Tucker, Brandi Carlile, Kelsey Waldon)

The second full-length from singer/songwriter Logan Ledger, Golden State is steeped in so many of the ineffable qualities embodied by California: wild-eyed idealism, uneasy unpredictability, the infinite promise of rebirth and renewal. In keeping with the refined ingenuity first revealed on his T Bone Burnett-produced self-titled debut, the Bay Area raised, Nashville-based musician also leans into California’s legacy of restless reinvention, continually cross-pollinating his vast reservoir of influences to create entirely unexpected musical idioms (including, at one point, a glorious collision of British folk and rowdy surf rock). Anchored in his captivating baritone and poetic lyricism, Golden State ultimately matches Ledger’s rich sense of history with an unfettered originality, arriving at a body of work both elegantly composed and endlessly surprising.

Produced by Shooter Jennings (Tanya Tucker, Brandi Carlile, Kelsey Waldon), Golden State marks a stylistic departure from the timeless country noir of Ledger’s critically lauded debut (a 2020 LP featuring such luminaries as avant-garde guitarist Marc Ribot). This time around, Ledger worked with musicians like Cage The Elephant guitarist Nick Bockrath, pedal-steel player Russ Pahl (Sturgill Simpson, Tyler Childers), Jennings’s longtime bassist Ted Russell Kamp and drummer Jamie Douglass, and Jennings himself (on piano, Wurlitzer, organ, and celeste), dreaming up a lush and spirited sound partly inspired by the California country-rock scene of the late-’60s and early-’70s. Mainly recorded live at the famed Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, the result is a sublime setting for Ledger’s layered meditations on loss and despair and the search for transcendence.

Once again revealing what he’s described as an “archaeological impulse with regards to music-making,” Golden State emerged as Ledger tapped into a goldmine of longtime inspirations: Western swing songwriter Cindy Walker, Gene Clark’s 1974 cult classic No Other, Bakersfield legends like Buck Owens, baroque-pop iconoclast Scott Walker, the most obscure and eccentric corners of early-20th-century folk music (as curated by bohemian polymath Harry Smith), to name just a few.