The Arcs – Yours, Dreamily [Album Stream]

Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys is back at it with his new band The Arcs with their debut album titled “Yours, Dreamily”. The 14-track project can be streamed via NPR below. If you’re looking to purchase it, the LP will be out September 4th on Nonesuch Records.

Right from the drop, Yours, Dreamily, ignites like a cigarette flicked on a stream of gasoline. The snarling melodies, warbling horn lines and in-the-pocket beats transport listeners into the album’s pulpy world of ’70s exploitation films and gritty biker-gang movies. Musically, The Arcs’ songs nod to an array of influences from the past: “Chains Of Love,” with its sweeping Mellotron strings and that wonderful chorus of female voices, or the seductive R&B jam “Nature’s Child” could both come straight out of Motown, or Stax, or a Curtis Mayfield film score. “Come & Go,” the record’s strangest piece, evokes a hazy late-night jazz loft party, complete with silky saxophone and distant sensual moans that drift in and out as if overheard through the walls of an old apartment building. But strip away all the cool genre trappings and the album reveals its depth: Like so many classic soul albums of the 1970s, Yours, Dreamily, offers a socially conscious depiction of race, privilege and opportunity, as in “Put A Flower In Your Pocket,” with its line, “The streets can see into your soul / It ain’t where you been, but where you’re gonna go.”