ABOUT
"You can't help but fall in love
with the heartache."
PASTE
"A subtle but beautiful elegance...
If you've ever wondered where country and Americana music is going, look no further.
Blue Cactus is painting pictures of limitless possibility."
NO DEPRESSION
"If country music is often about familiarity and comfort, this is more like having the rug artfully pulled out from under you
without even noticing it."
CREATIVE LOAFING
"With a high lonesome twang,
an Emmylou-like southern drawl,
and blistering guitar techniques,
Blue Cactus’ new record exercises the
honky-tonk muscles to firmly bear
the flag for a new generation
of classic country practitioners."
NEW COMMUTE
Brimming with cracked-open honesty and electrified twang, BELIEVER cements North Carolina’s Blue Cactus as a leading force in modern country and roots music. Led by songwriters Steph Stewart and Mario Arnez, the group’s third album was written over a heavy two years following their critically lauded debut BLUE CACTUS and the glitz-and-glam sophomore album STRANGER AGAIN, as Stewart battled chronic health issues and the duo reassembled their musical careers in the wake of 2020. Feeling into an arid internal landscape, Stewart found microclimates of life as she hummed melodies and jotted down phrases. On BELIEVER, Stewart’s instinct for cadence and lyricism evoke Emmylou Harris’ spacious storytelling and the dusty Southern folk melancholy of Gillian Welch while Arnez holds space for each song, tending the soil with layered folk textures, genre-hopping arrangements, and bittersweet hooks. The result is a shock of color and energy, Believer blooming as delicate, prickly, and bold as a field of wildflowers.
As a departure from earlier records, BELIEVER features Stewart as Blue Cactus’ sole lead singer, her gossamer warble setting a foundation upon which the duo’s multiple vibrant musical communities build. Recording in the buzzy indie-folk scene of their home in the Piedmont of North Carolina, and later among the country sheen of Nashville, TN, the songs transform and journey through genre and mood. On the title track, a velvety core of vocals and picked acoustic guitar crackles with barely-contained urgency before bursting into a chorus of guitar feedback and dirge-like drumming, creating a modern folk epic on par with Big Thief’s “Not” and Songs: Ohia’s “Farewell Transmission.” The folky ramble “Resolution” plods and plucks with the help of Arnez’s delicate acoustic guitar picking, a locked-in Tennessee rhythm section, and close harmonies by Arnez and fellow Southern singer-songwriter Erin Rae. Stewart wrote the feisty rocker “Bite My Tongue,” featuring Kentucky bluegrass singer Brit Taylor and legendary Nashville session musician Russ Pahl (Kacey Musgraves, Kenny Rogers) in a whirlwind of inspiration, her innate ear for pop-country clap-backs becoming buoyant on a bed of Wurlitzer bursts and pedal steel glissades.
Alongside Nashville veterans like producer Whit Wright, cosmic jazz instrumentalist Rich Ruth (Third Man Records), and Hozier keyboardist Ryan Connors, Blue Cactus solidified songs like the folky ramble “Resolution,” and the expansive sonic meditation “Take All Day.” At home in North Carolina, Arnez and Stewart worked with a trusted group of friends and producer Saman Khoujinian (The Dead Tongues, Mountain Man) at Small Pond Farm in Pittsboro to build out Believer’s first single “This Kind of Rain,” a punchy, twangy country confessional that digs deep into fear and depression. Stewart’s pristinely sung lyrics, nodding to Reba McEntire’s tough-but-tender 90s hits, form the song’s heart.
In a touch of genius and good fortune for this multi-location recording spree, the BELIEVER sessions came together cohesively with the help of Derek Garten, the mixing engineer behind Taylor Swift’s meticulous Taylor’s Version album reconstructions. The result is a mature and adventurous album showcasing Arnez and Stewart’s synergistic partnership, made unique by Stewart’s resilient heart-on-sleeve cowgirl storytelling and Arnez’s ear for both down-home and cosmic orchestration.
TOUR
PRESS
"Plenty of twang without coming off as forced country nostalgia and enough hooks and universal lyrical themes to win over pop music fans."
"A major expansion of their sound into an amalgamation of rock, folk, and Americana...an astonishing variety of sounds, from the nostalgic sway of 'Rodeo Queen' to the rollicking stomp of 'Rebel' to the cinematic crackle of 'Radioman' to the subtle sensuality of 'Stranger Again.'"
"Blue Cactus evokes a celestial soundscape of
mid-century heartbreak. Rather than attempt to fix what’s broken, this prickly pair of cosmic country artists embrace it."
"The North Carolina country duo premieres
a new song about musical and romantic partnership,
and the sanctity of new experiences."
"An emotional, personal development with an almost psychedelic turn."
"One of the top bands of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro music scene that has produced a lot of great stuff this year – new music from The Connells, Watchhouse/Mandolin Orange, Southern Culture on the Skids, and more –
and even amidst all that, 'Stranger Again'
might be the album of the year so far."
"The album continues the pair’s mission to blend classic country sounds with vintage ’70s pop sensibilities and a sobering sense of honesty."
"Their most pronounced and well-defined work to date...their follow-up album Stranger Again
promises to take the group to even greater heights."
"The otherworldliness of the music, is almost in perfect contrast to their distinctly grounded and human story-telling, throughout the record they tackle topics as old as music itself; loss and longing, self-improvement and self-expression, personal, political and human struggles, and the joys of hard work paying off."
"There’s a lonesome honesty to this song
that will creep right into your soul from first listen."
"An incredibly tender performance that teeters on the edge of heartbreak. 'Come Clean'
is a profound confession of frailty."
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