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about the artist

 

Naren Schoenacher has been part of the western North Carolina music scene since the late 1990s, most notably with the rock outfit Marsupial and then with the acoustic act Barnacle. In 2008 he took a step back to reevaluate his musical life. Married and with two kids, Naren decided to devote what time he had to recording his own songs. He arranged them himself and played all the instruments while tracking a ten-song demo in his house.

In 2010 he joined the Asheville five-piece, Worldline. While that band worked on its first album Schoenacher recruited six other musicians to rerecord his own songs at Asheville’s Landslide Studio.

Naren teamed up with producer Andrew Schatzberg and co-produced the album which was completed during the course of 2011.

The result is The World as I See It, a full-length album heavy as the heart-rending soul of Wilco and easy as the melodic rock of David Gilmour. Alive and Well Records released the album in early 2012, and Schoenacher formed a band to support it.

 

 

Saint Solitude - Journal of Retreat

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A lot of artists explore the surface of themes such as love found, love lost, abuse, and fragility.  Naren Schoenacher delves deeper on his first solo album, The World as I See It. Ten songs infused with sonic textures symbolic of life’s simplicities and complexities.

Naren’s singing stytle is naturally sad but hopeful, smooth but powerful. Featuring an honest lyric coupled with tasteful structures, The World as I See It perfectly captures Naren’s musical vision. Some songs look back, some look ahead, and others are character treatments. All have a feeling of endurance, both in style and content.

Influenced by Wilco, Beck, Cake, Ryan Adams, and Sufjan Stevens among others, Naren has the ability to send his songs soaring or base them wholly on terra firma, thanks in part to his studio collaborators: drummer Jeff Sipe; bassist Robert Jones; George Scott on organ; Matthew Smith on pedal steel guitar; Brian Turner on organ, piano, and trumpet; percussionist Peter Councell; and record producer Andrew Schatzberg. These artists help distinguish The World as I See It from music of the same genre that relies solely on hooks and standard rhythms.

The album opens with “Beginning of the End,” a mid-tempo ballad reminiscent of a traveler at a dead end. The rest of the album is part explanation for how he got there and part solution—it’s not a dead end; it’s a fork in the road.

In “Best of You,” Naren writes of the abiding, unconditional love that transcends ups and downs, romance and desire, time and place.  “There Was a Time,” one of the more straight-forward rockers on the CD, details how easily a relationship can go down the drain. As easy and fast as the crunchy guitar licks characterizing this song. In “Here's Where it Ends,” Naren addresses the issue of child abuse and how
it often continues through many generations. This is the story of a man who has chosen to end this vicious cycle within his own family.

In “So Glad,” the slow burn of the vocal performance gives way to a crescendo of textured guitars to mirror the personal tumult latent in the lyric. “Close to Heaven,” the opposite of ”So Glad,” borders as close to alternative country music as Naren gets. Never leaving the range where slide guitars dominate, the song speaks clearly of what heaven ought to be—love and purpose—whether heaven is a place or not.