SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - s4story -- Music from the Thawing of a Frozen Pen

Dudley, a kind of cosmic indie-folk-rock band built around the unique song craft of Ellen Turner, is back, and as beautifully confused as ever. It's a healthy, inquisitive condition in art and life, embracing the dark/light of it all in tunefully poetic terms, as Dudley has realized on the albums Public Nudism (1995), Are Our Oars Out? (1996) and Doin' Jack (1998). 30 years hence, the band is now reborn through the resplendent new Beautiful Confusion (2026).

Some have compared the sound and the creative elasticity to such artists as Joni Mitchell, Jane Siberry, and Big Thief—a kindred band born years after Dudley. But Dudley boasts a sound of one's own. Folk, pop and roll music and the power of a well-turned song vessel may be at the core of the operation, but the musical wardrobe is subject to change. Vibes morph from the calmly anthemic spirit of the opening title track to the musings of "Hope Driving" and "Sad Man" to the jubilance of "A Song of Joy" and the post-Haight Ashbury-esque jamdown of "Nothing Had Happened."

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A driving rock energy rises up on "Deliverance" and "Spellbound" ("pop, light up my mind") and African spices filter into "Song of Joy" and "Blessing of Choice." Turner eloquently ponders love, life, nature and spirituality, and other matters in her lyrics. She sometimes writes about (song)writing, as in "Sweet Idea" and "Can I Imagine" ("terror in a frozen pen," later "thawing" said pen). She deals with acceptance and gratitude in "Right There," and the vicissitudes of love in "Run With It" ("I wanna run with it and see what comes up. To plaster my walls with it, to run and get strong from it").

Dudley's GPS coordinates are now nationwide but germinated in the mothership town of Santa Barbara Calif. in the early 1990s. Turner relocated to the south and Symer followed his magnet to the northwest. Santa Barbara remained home for Woodard and Lackner, whose magical mountain retreat/recording studio, the Tompound, was the creative epicenter for the new album, several years in the making.

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Gifted musical friends joined the party along the path: vocalists Jennifer Terran, Rebecca Troon and Dara Ackerman, guitarist Sean Kennedy, bassists Steve Nelson and Jim Connolly.

Dudley is back in town. Song town.

What's it all about? Maybe a letting go of needing to know. As the lyric goes in Turner's title tune: "It's shocking to my heart/How I run from imperfection/Always looking for a missing part/But there's a beautiful confusion to it all."

Links & infos:

www.householdink.com/dudley