Pete Sinjin
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Pete Sinjin

New York City, New York, United States | INDIE

New York City, New York, United States | INDIE
Band Americana Singer/Songwriter

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This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

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"Better Angels Radio"

The Brooklyn, NY-based singer-songwriter delivers a knockout punch of Americana/folk in the style and spirit of Woody Guthrie and Steve Earle. Fantastic songwriting and crafty acoustic guitar playing are front and center on Sinjin’s brand new release. Fans of roots rock will no doubt dig this release. It’s refreshing to hear raw talent without any gimmicks or tricks masking it. This is the real deal. Highly recommended.

Gabe
- Creative Loafing


"Pete Sinjin Better Angels Radio"

Better Angels Radio brings you rock music with a country heart from New York-based Pete Sinjin. Experimentation with style seems to be all the rage these days and I can think of a whole stack of really good artists/bands who defy easy categorisation. Some manage the trick of being eclectic rather better than others and there's enough about this record to suggest that Pete Sinjin might be one of those who really knows what he's about. From the laid back modern Californian country of Driving California to the Son Volt-inspired stunner that closes the album, Schuylkill Red, there is a mastery of style throughout the album with just the odd routine, ho-hum moment.
A man who clearly grew up in the pre-digital age, he's got a couple of songs lamenting the fading glory of rock'n'roll - one about the death of record shops and one about the banality of modern radio. There's also a very fine song about Bobby Kennedy's funeral train, written from the perspective of a small child being made aware that he was witnessing an important moment. I guess it's about the death of hope; JFK wasn't president long enough to extinguish the hope of a younger generation and the assassination of Bobby just five years later - in the same year that Martin Luther King had been killed - must have seemed like the triumph of reactionary cynicism. Pete Sinjin's clearly still fighting for that better future and a romantic's soul comes over in his lyrics time and again, whether he's fighting the good fight or pledging his love to his girl.
Alongside his chief cohorts, Riley McMahon, Mike Davis and drummer Dan Vonnegut, Pete's come up with some cracking sounds for this album; you might decide the sound is characterised by the solid rock electric guitar that features frequently but they slip in so much else besides. There's some gloriously swooping lap steel and fiddle on Driving California, a beautiful acoustic guitar line on Funeral Train, some sweet harmonising vocals from Michaela Anne Neller on Snowflakes In Your Summer Hair.....and so much more besides. Most of all, there's a whole stack of little hooks which lodge in your subconscious, lurking there till you hear the song unexpectedly, recognise the hook and feel a surge of happy familiarity. That closing song, Scuylkill Red, is built around a repeated phrase on the acoustic guitar and then the electric guitar and lap steel come in, dropping elongated bent notes into the portentous pool of sound that the band is building. It's a sound to pin you in your seat and though there are other moments in the course of the album where they get pretty intense - All That Remains has a particularly apocalyptic air about it - it's probably this last song that you'd have on repeat play for a while and, overall, I think Better Angels Radio is one of those records that could steadily grow in your affections.
John Davy
- lubber and Smoke


Discography

Pete Sinjin "Better Angels Radio" CD

Pete Sinjin "Hoots, Hollers, and Rooftop Serenades" CD

Pete Sinjin 'On Good Days' CD

Centralia 'Heather Garden' EP

'Next Time Around' EP

3 on the Tree 'Walkaway' EP

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Bio

NYC based Pete Sinjin graces the American roots music scene with a true spirit for the mythology of Americana. A Pennsylvania born 4th cousin to baseball great Lou Gehrig whose (albeit myth making and regularly drunk) grandma Guthrie claimed blood ties to Woody, Pete regularly hitchhiked to NYC to visit the still breathing ghosts of the West Village at age 15 and migrated to San Francisco as a band roadie before he had a chance of graduating high school.
He’s played with bands and as a solo artist from the West Coast to the East, alongside artists such as Chris Roldan (Whiskeytown), Jonathon Segel (Camper Van Beethoven) and his current bassist Mike Davis (Nora Jones).
Pete’s lyrics can weave narratives like veteran Steve Earle with poetry as deeply trans?xing as Jay Farrar’s (Uncle Tupelo, Son Volt). Like Neil Young, his music tends to comfortably straddle both sides of the sonic fence, from plaintive country to blissful roots rock...throw in a healthy dose of intuitive pop sense and hooks ala Beatles and Big Star, and you’ve got Pete Sinjin.