Crazy Dreams by Kyle Avallone

Crazy Dreams, the sophomore album from NYC musician and singer-songwriter Kyle Avallone, is a collection of nostalgic meditations that take you out of the smoky bar and into the gray daylight of a seaside town. It is a cinematic dreamscape steeped in warm vocals, lush synthesizers, and sweeping steel guitars. Throughout the ten songs, tender narratives play like home movies on a living room wall, revealing little worlds and distilled memories.

Recorded at Studio G in Brooklyn with Jeff Berner (Psychic TV), Avallone reaches beyond the lo-fi sleaze of his 2020 debut, Last Minute Man, for a higher fidelity and grander sound palette.“After making a record by myself on an old four-track tape machine, it felt like a natural progression to go into a proper studio and play music with my friends". The core band consists of Mark Perro (The Men) on keys and Russell Hymowitz on bass, who both sing backing vocals, along with David Christian on drums. On several tunes, pedal steel played by Jon “Catfish” DeLorme (The Nude Party) dances around Avallone’s baritone voice, delivering a twang that is distinctively more New York than Nashville.

Inspired by the conversational storytelling of artists like Terry Allen and Lou Reed, Avallone was moved to capture the drama and mystery of his own life experiences. The characters we meet here are flawed. Mistakes are made and lies are told. Love is either lost or on the line. Dreams manifold as both echoes of the past and hopes for the future–the faded glow of childhood impressions in “Down the Hill”; the single mothers’ kitchen table reverie in “Going to the Beach”; the lament for summer’s end in “Vacant Sea”. Many of the songs unfold as a single day; sunrise to sunset. There's a yearning for chances–first chances, second chances and, perhaps, a held breath for changes.


“As you get older, time shines a light on things. Your heroes look different, the rooms you sat in feel different,” says Avallone. Of course, one can only look back for so long, and by the closing number we are returned to the present–“We sleep in late and let the morning roll by/Torn up sheets keep the sun from our eyes/Big plans for change, big hopes they’ll come/We hide away on love island.” A catharsis transpires over the course of this record, and ultimately a sense of absolution. The world outside may be burning, but we can find some kind of serenity in the little pieces of here and now.

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