Mark Erelli – “Analog Hero” (video) (premiere)

Boston singer-songwriter Mark Erelli has a new critically acclaimed album out, For a Song, about which Jonathan Frahm said, “Erelli crafts yet another easy listen, ethereal and sincere in a style between both his composition and delivery that has previously had his work compared to such seminal artists as Paul Simon and Jackson Browne. Not unlike the aforementioned, Erelli flexes his songwriter’s muscle and proves his timelessness again and again, making no exception in For a Song.”

For his latest single “Analog Hero”, Erelli indulges in a bit of nostalgia, poking at the digital/analogue divide, and celebrating the good, old-fashioned values of hard work and fixing what you need fixed rather than simply casting things aside for new things. Erelli’s direct and seemingly simple style of writing and telling a story compares favorably to the work of Guy Clark as he wistfully appreciates a time when people lived more modestly, not wrapped up in a flurry of consumerism and consumption. It’s an issue that’s “trending” these days and showing up in quite few songs, including Miranda Lambert’s recent “Automatic”.

Erelli says about the song and video: “My grandfather, an architect for the city of Boston and an avid inventor of household gadgets, lived with us when I was growing up. We had breakfast just the two of us nearly every morning, during which he would regale me of tales of things he invented and ideas about what was wrong with the world. It’s not ‘about’ my grandfather, or any one specific person per se, but I think he’d have a lot in common with the song’s protagonist. Incidentally, the man we found to play the role of the fix-it man in the video (John Hubbard) fits the part so well, I often see him in my mind’s eye whenever I sing the song!”