New York–based songwriter Zion Battle’s debut album as Katzin aims to draw on American landscapes to express the human experience in the same way Springsteen did with Nebraska, albeit with a more erratic instrumental palette and a lyrical focus on coming of age to match the music’s unpredictable turns. Maybe a better reference point for Buckaroo would be Ross McElwee’s cult documentary Sherman’s March—only instead of slumping through Civil War battle sites amid a midlife crisis, Battle is galloping through scenes of the old American West as he charts the gulf between how he interpreted stories of cowboys and bandits as a kid versus a young adult’s perspective aided by a recent trip abroad.
Today Katzin is sharing the final track from the album, “Nantucket,” a track that summarizes the literal and figurative coast-to-coast journey this record takes (it was recorded in California). The song opens with pastoral acoustic guitar and near-whispered vocals, slowly building to a fairly explosive full-band sound in the outro. “‘Nantucket’ is about a comedown, sobering up, perhaps washing up on a familiar shore. Several coastlines are implied in the lyrics, both East and West,” he shares. “It’s also about Meghan Trainor because she’s obviously the only girl who's really from Nantucket. It’s all about that bass, no treble.”
Check out the beach-day music video for “Nantucket” below, and pre-order Buckaroo ahead of its February 13 release here.
