Artist Tré Burt will be releasing his third studio album Traffic Fiction through Oh Boy Records. The album’s 14 tracks marks an unexpected musical reinvention, which is rooted in Burt’s new and idiosyncratic version of classic soul.
At the same time the LP also preserves the special relationship Burt shared with his grandfather who passed away earlier this year. This was the music the two shared for a very long time.
Traffic Fiction is the follow up to 2021’s You, Yeah, You, which is Burt’s sophomore album and where bits of the artist’s roots and compositional ambitions began to emerge.
On the upcoming album, the music is in full bloom, from the sweet country-soul surrealism of the title track to the skywriting rock of “2 For Tha Show.” Burt is as urgent and commanding as he has ever been and Traffic Fiction is the sound of Burt confidently bending a sentimental past to his present will.
To get into soul, dub and a little punk, Burt returned to the basics of self recording in sequestered silence. During a Canadian tour, the artist set aside a few days to stay in a friend’s spare apartment and write while renting enough instruments from the affordable gear to build a makeshift studio for his GarageBand demos.
The title track soon emerged, its effortless magnetism prompted by a poem Burt written about stupid city congestion and a piece by saxophonist and singer Gary Bartz.
Burt recognized he had found the sound of the next album, so he booked another rural cabin in Canada for nine days and rented more guitars, basses, and the same keyboard he’d bought during the You, Yeah, You sessions.
Burt built his one-man-band demos before returning to Nashville’s The Bomb Shelter to work with a trusted band of pals and esteemed producer Andrija Tokic.
Burt’s grandfather was dying and the world was struggling with a pandemic but Burt gave himself permission to have fun and be funny, to let these songs lift him and, eventually, maybe others, too. Traffic Fiction feels like a buoy amid these turbulent times, something that pulls people above the wreckage.
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