“It’s what happens when you stop asking permission to be a little bad,” says Blu Miller about “Be Naughty,” which—interestingly enough—was written with their fiancé. “The songwriting process became an exercise in not really giving a single fuck.”
Rooted in American folk, jazz and other traditional strains, Miller’s creative formula draws on the melodic storytelling of Paul Simon, Harry Nilsson and James Taylor. After a decade of performing across the United States and Europe as Aidan Palmer, the Portland, Ore.-based singer/songwriter felt a break from their birth name was in order for their upcoming LP, the self-released Bask In The Wonder. The moniker is a tribute to their late grandparents, Jimmie and Jeane Braun, who grew up in Eden, Wis., a small Catholic community where music was a family tradition.
Co-produced by Sam Weber (Madison Cunningham, Alela Diane) and engineered by Mario Ramirez (Faye Webster, Black Pumas, Waxahatchee), Bask In The Wonder was tracked over two weeks at Portland’s Anjuna Recording Studio. Miller assembled percussionist Danny Austin-Manning, bassist/slide guitarist Tejas Leier Heyden and other trusted collaborators, encouraging them to follow their instincts. Working live without click tracks or a strict creative hierarchy, they developed arrangements collectively, later incorporating violin, viola, cello and brass.
That spontaneity is particularly well suited to the album’s latest single, whose origins were deliberately uncomplicated.
“With ‘Be Naughty,’ we didn’t want to overthink it,” says Miller. “We wanted it to groove and express a simple message, and that is: Nobody’s fully good, nobody’s fully bad, and the line between the two is a lot blurrier than we’re led to believe.”
We’re proud to premiere Blu Miller’s “Be Naughty.” Bask In The Wonder arrives November 20.
—Hobart Rowland
