“The name of the title track ‘Smilin’ At The Future’ was pinched from the text under my picture on the front page of the local paper in Holly, Michigan the day after graduation. That photo inspired the first line of the song: Happy sounds from caps and gowns on graduation day / I was the future / Smilin’ at the Future, liking what I see”
Jeremy Facknitz’s new album is titled Smilin’ at the Future, a caption from his high school graduation photo in the hometown newspaper. If the songs smile at the future, it’s not idealism but a need to transcend the struggle of the present and the wounds of the past. This is the sixth record by the two-time Kerrville Grassy Hill New Folk Songwriting Competition finalist, and it’s his strongest songwriting most imaginative music yet. Facknitz describes his music as “indie rock with a made-for-the-theatre twist. I’m a singer-songwriter, but I’m not 3 chords and the truth – I’m 8 to 15 chords and cryptic cynicism. Less like John Prine and Townes Van Zandt – more like Elvis Costello and Lin Manuel Miranda.”
Surprisingly, these lively descriptors make sense. Like Costello and Miranda, Facknitz is a gifted storyteller open to finding new forms and new sounds. Writing about his album From These Sweet Ashes, Collin Estes writes that Facknitz’s “emphasis on song-craft is immediately apparent, and the album an artistic triumph.” Loring Wirbel writes “The next instantiation of Nick Lowe and other power-pop barons already exists, and From Those Sweet Ashes is his defining work to date.” Wirbel goes on to compare Facknitz’s music to Andrew Bird and John Darnielle.
