Spencer Cullum
It was in his garden shed in Nashville, Tennessee, that Spencer Cullum found an escape from the noise of the world, from the spew of hatred and vitriol that has come to soundtrack the present day.
Here, in the musician’s makeshift recording studio, the discord was muted. The rush of life was stalled, even if just for a moment. It would be here that his Coin Collection 3 would come to life.
“There was a lot about reading news back home and reading news here that made me very frustrated,” says the British-born, Nashville-based singer, songwriter, and pedal steel savant. Holding the constant cycle of bad news up to the light, Cullum tried to create a narrative beyond the violence and greed.
For instance, the artist penned the album’s “Easy Street” after seeing an image of an ICE agent smoking a cigar in celebration of a day’s work detaining and deporting people. The slinking number, a kaleidoscope of languid blues and sleepy folk, envisions the officer ultimately regretful, undone by the harm he caused in the name of “freedom.” Cullum found a sense of justice when he flipped the script.
Not all of Coin Collection 3 is glaringly political in this way. However, most of it is topical, the album’s nine tracks acting as a kind of remedy for reality. “I'm trying to be very conscious of not being too political,” Cullum shares, “but there's a big concern of how we are treating people and Earth.”
As a way to make sense of everything from the climate crisis to late-stage capitalism, the musician turned to the folklore of his native England. He found comfort – even answers – in the occult-tinged tales of ancient relics and midnight rites rather than in the extreme Christian views that tend to warp his adopted home in the American South.