National Park Radio’s straightforward rural folk and bluegrass is a pleasantly rustic sound, the audio equivalent of gigantic cedars and down-home cookouts. The Great Divide is comfortable, upbeat acoustic guitar strumming along to foot stomps and mandolin. It’s dance music in its most traditionally American sense: this is the stuff you waltz to around a campfire with your sweetheart. It’s joy filtered through the lens of Americana, and that simplicity in approach should be celebrated.
“The Great Divide is not just a collection of songs that I wrote over the past few years,” says National Park Radio’s Stefan Szabo. “It represents a change in my life; a commitment to a lifestyle of uncertainty and exploration, of living and enjoying life on my own terms. These songs reflect on the joys, pains, struggles, and triumphs that I and many of us endure when we finally decide to follow our dreams and passions.”
The Great Divide is out July 29. A week ahead of its release, stream the whole album here.