This is what the Featured Artist slot is for. Sylvie is the project of Los Angeles musician Ben Schwab — formerly of Golden Daze and Drugdealer, named for a Matthews Southern Comfort song — and New Season, his full-length debut with Ghostly International, is the kind of record that reminds you why the album still matters as a form. It was recorded mostly alone in Schwab’s home studio in Silverlake, the same way he made his 2022 self-titled mini-LP, and then finished and mastered at Abbey Road. DIY beginnings, Abbey Road ending: that arc is the whole story of this record, and you can hear both ends of it in every track.
“California Hills,” featuring Sierra Ferrell, is the album’s centrepiece and its focus track, and it’s a tender goodbye. Schwab describes it as being about “the feeling of absence that comes from being in a place that was once shared with someone who is no longer there” — and the song plays exactly like that: Ferrell’s vocals floating over an arrangement that gathers instrumentation and harmonies as it goes, the California landscape of the official lyric video doing what the words only suggest. It’s the ninth track of ten, placed near the end of a record structured in two chapters — Side A morning (movement, searching, discovery), Side B night (reflection, grief carried home) — a hopeful goodbye and a look toward what’s to come.
The rest of the album earns the feature too. “Rina,” the lead single featuring Alex Amen, was written by Schwab’s father John Schwab of ’70s L.A. folk-rock band Mad Anthony, and Amen’s vocals ride soft guitars, brass and pedal steel. “Not Looking Back Anymore” is a tender folk arrangement about moving forward and accepting that some chapters are better left behind. “Wish I Could Tell You” is a psych-folk duet with Kacy Lee Anderson. “You and Me” has been compared, fairly, to McCartney’s “Blackbird.” Schwab wrote, produced and arranged every song, with guests including Courtney Marie Andrews and Will Worden alongside Ferrell and Amen — and Qobuz named New Season its Album of the Week.
Schwab comes out of an L.A. canyon country-rock scene alongside Sam Burton, Alex Amen, Haylie Davis, Mikaela Davis and Drugdealer, and he’s done the miles: support slots for Devendra Banhart, Cut Worms, Aaron Frazer, Teskey Brothers and Hiss Golden Messenger, headline tours across North America, Europe and Australia, and a West Coast headline run coming in February 2027, including the Troubadour in Los Angeles. New Season is the record that turns all of that into a statement — a debut made alone in a home studio, finished at Abbey Road, and released into a world that needs exactly this kind of patient, hopeful songwriting. Start with “California Hills.” Stay for the whole season.
LISTEN
Spotify — California Hills ft. Sierra Ferrell
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