Sweet Undertow is a movement: it is birthing a strange beast called Country-Disco - a chimera with blues-soaked Americana roots. It is the spawn of NYC-based songwriter Eddy Undertow, whose restless path runs from wildland firefighting to wandering Asia and Europe with only a guitar in hand. Raised on Muddy Waters and Midwest punk, Sweet Undertow's sound collides grit and melody and 1970s booty-shaking. 2022’s Skeletone Machine (Mother West), recorded with John Vanderslice leans more Rock. 2026's Days Without Names (Mother West) recorded with Eric Corne and Charles Newman leans more Country. The new tunes lean deep into disco.
The sound developed from performances across the world - Eddy has entertained bemused patrons of off-piste Crimean bars and residents of an orphanage in now war-torn Ukraine. He fronted a pro band in Ho Chi Minh City and partied through the slums of Mumbai; and was once paid in counterfeit shoes to perform a single song at a Carpathian Mountains disco. He has performed in the operating room of a hospital in rural Guatemala for doctors actively performing surgery on patients.
Now. Sweet Undertow is playing at clubs throughout Brooklyn, the Lower East Side and the East Village.
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Listening through Days Without Names, top to bottom, “Step Lightly,” offers a sweet, rustic bounce under Eddy’s seductive rasp and picked acoustic guitar, (that’s Maxie Mandel on backing vocals) rounded out by Jim Semitekol’s electric guitar, Doug Pettibone on pedal steel, John Eckstrom on bass, and Dave Tavel on drums and percussion, his core band pulled from the Skeletone Machine sessions that remains fairly stationary throughout the new album sequence, with the exception of a few noteworthy incidentals. “Jessie Lee,” for example, is a classic barroom shuffle with commensurate (awesome) piano work courtesy of Jake Pinto, and this time, featuring Haley Spence Brown on additional vocals. “Little Great Depression” and the touching, “Lose A Fight,” spotlight gorgeous embellishments from the Mastersons’ Eleanor Whitmore on fiddle and violin, respectively.
“To me, Days Without Names documents an exploration of the question of suicide- both in my own life, but also for humanity writ large,” says Eddy. “There are songs that explore lives subject to forces that blow past a person's ability to cope,” for which he cites “Hit Me Like A Memory,” featuring Ed Maxwell on bass and the Eels’ Butch Norton on drums, and “Dropping Helicopters.” He continues, “There are songs that laugh at the maudlin, self-centeredness of depression; “‘Free Whiskey,’ ‘Little Great Depression,’ and ‘Country Blues.’ (aforementioned). There are songs that confront mortality (‘Lose a Fight’) and songs that examine how love can transcend mortality. Even if only for a while (‘Wicked Heart’).”
Eric Corne from Forty Below Records (Freedy Johnston, John Mayall, The Bacon Brothers) mixed half of the album with Mother West’s Charles Newman (Magnetic Fields), mixing the other half.
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