Since emerging in 2008 with his folky cover of ELO's "Do Ya" - which earned the praise of its legendary composer Jeff Lynne and was included on the Showtime hit "Californication" - the multi-faceted artist Neil Nathan (neilnathan.com) has made an art form of joyfully schizophrenic record making, jumping seamlessly from genre to genre (blistering rock to gentle acoustic pop).
Praised by UK music and film magazine No Ripcord, as "the bastard stepchild of
Jackson Browne and David Bowie," the NYC based singer-songwriter releases his new ethereal, acoustic driven LP, 'Flowers on the Moon,' on April 28. The album is available on
Amazon,
iTunes,
Spotify,
Bandcamp, and other online retailers.
Neil laid the foundation in Brooklyn, then recorded vocals and mixed in Atlanta. His musical and vocal style on the tracks have been compared to everyone from Cat Stevens, Neil Young, The Byrds and Seals & Crofts to Robert Plant, Flaming Lips, The Kinks, Band of Horses and My
Morning Jacket.
Neil beautifully and whimsically describes the overall vibe and thematic flow that evolved as the project took shape. "Life is short. Art is long. That about sums up the theme of my new record 'Flowers on the Moon.' The quote is attributed to Hippocrates, the father of medicine, and this record has been a kind of medicine for me, a healing meditation on the fleeting nature of life. While recording it, I lost my father, and it features a tune I wrote for him and his love of baseball and the Detroit Tigers, 'Diamond in the Sky.' The theme of impermanence flows through each song: relationships, seasons, life, death."
Neil continues his fascination with the Motor City, by including his cover of Detroit Singer Songwriter Rodriguez's Sugar Man on the album. Holger Brockman, the DJ who broke Sugar Man in Australia in 1975, approves. "Neil's version is great!"
Neil also recorded his debut LP, The
Distance Calls in Detroit Rock City. Produced by Garage Rock Hero Bobby Harlow (King Tuff, The Go), it featured musicians from Queens of the Stone Age, The Dead Weather, The Go, King Tuff, and Detroit Cobras. The album's track "California Run" was featured on ESPN and NHL Network, and was spun live at San Francisco Giants games.
Neil's former roommate, actress Rosario Dawson, guest starred in the music video.
Neil's fiery follow-up, the "power to the people" themed 'Sweep The Nation' LP, earned critical praise as a "scintillating master work" and "crunchy hard rocking masterpiece" and scored Neil features in Magnet Magazine and The Vinyl District.
Neil's creative influence extends to the music video realm as well. In 2013, Huffington Post posted a feature on his inventive clip for "
Jumpstart," a claymation extravaganza which featured President Obama's twins (Hope and Change) drag racing Iranian President Ahmadinejad and Vladimir Putin. The site called it "a bizarre good time."
Neil's also been a cultural influencer in the field of education. A graduate of Cornell University with a degree in Economics, the New Jersey-born musician taught world history at
Martin Luther King, Jr. High School in Manhattan, during which time he landed on the cover of American
Teacher magazine, what Neil calls his Rolling Stone moment in education. During that time, he also produced and starred in an off-Broadway dystopian rock opera, "Automatic Superstar." Neil recently plunged back into the land of dystopia with his motion comic book video for his protest rocker "
I Ain't No Company Man" (from his album 'Sweep The Nation'). It features stark black and white graphic novel style images, and is a fierce indictment of the massive influence corporations and big money have on the U.S. government. John Ingham, author/photographer of
Spirit of 76: London Punk Eyewitness called it a "hard rockin' explosion" and 50thirdand3rd, chimed in with, "Neil has something really important to say here."
