Buckaroo

Buckaroo, the debut album from New York songwriter Katzin, projects symbols of the mythologized American West - cowboys, horses, vast deserts, rolling plains, ancient rock formations - onto the leap from adolescence to adulthood in all its unsteady shine. Zion Battle broke ground on the album the summer after he graduated from high school. Together with collaborator and producer Max Morgen, he drove to Joshua Tree for a week of intensive recording. "By isolating ourselves, we were able to capture this raw creative energy,” Battle says. “It feels like we made a love letter to our childhoods." Surging with rolling drums, filigreed synthesizers, and guitars that flip from a whisper to a thunder roll on a dime, Buckaroo renders the beauty of North America through a deceptively nonchalant electroacoustic collage. “One of our main goals was to make the album sound like the desert,” says Battle. Elegiac and smoldering with hope, Buckaroo sticks with you: a perfect snapshot of a vivid time. "It’s a recording of a moment in adolescence as much as it’s a musical recording," says Battle. "I really think in 30 years I’ll look back on it and maybe cry."