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Hello and welcome to Northwest Music Month 2016, where we’re featuring a different local band or artist for your music discovering pleasure every day during the month of June, to help ring in a summer of local music. Some days these artists could be a regional favorite that’s already got a following, and other days they could be a complete unknown that you’ve never heard of. On this Friday, June 17th, we’d like to help you through your otherwise tedious Friday morning by turning you onto the music of an unfairly overlooked local darling, Lana McMullen.
Hailing from the Emerald City, local songstress Lana McMullen has been taking the Seattle singer-songwriter scene by storm since moving her in 2012. Yes, in the year that the world was supposed to end, instead our local singer-songwriter scene was introduced to one of the finest we’ve had. Only a few years later, Lana’s debut full-length album, Traveling Light, was unleashed onto the world, and you could tell she spent this intervening time fine-tuning her sound and choosing a great backing band and array guest collaborators to bring this project some extra oomph.
In McMullen’s music, you can definitely pick up some nods to Americana and alt-country music, but it doesn’t overdo the guitar twang style enough to alienate those turned off by the twangier guitar-driven music out there. Lana’s tendency towards instrumentally rich and compositionally complex music does wonders to back up her incredibly passionate singing and lyrics. Her shy soprano vocals aren’t the sort of everyday vocals you could find just about anywhere; her voice has the sort of tone and quirkiness that, when you hear it, you know exactly who it is right away.
Lana McMullen recently dropped a new single titled “Friend of Mine,” a heartbreaking ballad about the death of her father, and about finding one’s place in the world, trying to find a place to call home, all sorts of depressing, but poignantly-explored topics. We can only hope this incredibly compelling track will be on a full-length LP in the near future. In the meantime, if you’ve somehow gone this long without hearing of Lana McMullen, you’re in for one hell of a new artist discovery.
You can find Lana McMullen on Facebook and at lanamcmullen.com. Listen to “Friend of Mine” below.
If you would like to have your band submitted for a chance to be featured in this segment, consult this link for more information on how you can do so. Submissions for Northwest Music Month will be taken until this Sunday, June 19th, so make sure to get your submission in soon.
