Michael Spaly and Chuck Melchin have been playing music together on and off since meeting through the Cambridge, Massachusetts roots rock scene around a decade ago.
Melchin fronts the alt-country collective The Bean Pickers Union and Spaly formed the folk–bluegrass band Green Monroe. The two join forces as Los Brujos for an EP that owes much to the harmonious spirit of Crosby, Stills & Nash.
With Spaly living in Michigan and Melchin dwelling out in the woods of New Hampshire, this collaboration was, out of necessity, done remotely. Other than this, there's no clue that the record was made during the pandemic with a world in crisis.
The only co-write is the opener Reckoning; the remaining four tracks are democratically split between the two song writers. Carla Ryder adds to the peaceful easy feeling by singing backing vocals on Melchin’s tunes, Bronco and Everything I Can.
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High Times is about the difficulty of adjusting to life in a new town while Bitter Blue is about a young man struggling to break free of bad habits.
It all suggests that everything is gonna be all right - you just have to smoke enough weed and imagine that the 1970s never ended.
Hear Alchemy at Bandcamp
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