Drive-By Truckers' Offshoot Gonzalez Smith Celebrate Debut Album With 'Gelato'

12-02-2023

(BHM) Gonzalez Smith - the new musical project from singer-songwriter (and Drive-By Truckers multi-instrumentalist) Jay Gonzalez and cult comedy writer Pete Smith (Space Ghost Coast To Coast, The Brak Show) - have released their debut record, Roll Up A Song today. Roll Up A Song arrives via Madrid, Spain's Bobo Integral in conjunction with Gonzalez's own Middlebrow Records. To celebrate the release, the band has shared a new official music video for the song "Gelato," streaming now.

"'Gelato' is possibly the prettiest piece of piano pop you'll peep with your precious earballs," says xxx. "Jay Gonzalez and Pete Smith are like a modern-day Bacharach/David, if Burt spent his nights tearing it up with one of the best live rock bands in America, and Hal was a writer for Space Ghost Coast to Coast and The Brak Show. Their debut album as Gonzalez Smith, Roll Up a Song, is a seamless fusion of power pop, piano ballads, bossa nova, and pure spun sugar confection. Jay brings the same multi-instrumental compositional skills found on his first three solo albums, and Pete pens lyrics by turns honest, romantic, arch, and comedic, sometimes in the same verse. The results are so stellar, that it's a shock to discover that the Drive-By Truckers guitarist/keyboardist and the Adult Swim comedy scribe haven't been writing together for decades. Roll Up a Song" transcends eras and genres. It's a harmonious journey, uniting melodies and lyrics into a timeless masterpiece."

Roll Up A Song unites Gonzalez's knack for melodic songcraft and musical invention with Smith's dexterous lyricism - by turns honest, romantic, arch, and comedic, sometimes in the same verse - to create something both timeless and altogether original. A seamless fusion of power pop, piano ballads, bossa nova, and spun sugar musical confection, Roll Up A Song was heralded earlier in the fall, with the releases of the head-nodding power pop banger, "She's My Girl" and the sweeping, symphonic pop song "The Lexington Line" featuring strings arranged by Athens, GA musician Brent Cash.