Here, it’s not even one of the album’s four singles. A couple years later, Stewart and Mario Arnez broke away and rebranded as Blue Cactus, and it’s been all uphill ever since – first with a self-titled debut album in 2017 that drew great buzz, then blowing up last year with a wildly popular anti-Trump single, “Finger on the Button.”Īnd then in May, Stewart and Arnez put out their best record yet, maybe the best thing our local music scene has gotten all year: their second album, “Stranger Again.”īlending classic Americana with dreamy psychedelia, “Stranger Again” opens with a bang, or rather a twang: a slide-guitar riff followed by Stewart’s plaintive voice delivering the most archetypically country of opening lines, “Today was the day he left you.” That opening track, “Blue As The Day,” is great in itself on most albums I’ve heard this year, it’d easily be the highlight. They were a larger band, Steph Stewart and the Boyfriends, playing Festifall 2013 in support of their debut album “Over the World Below.” Even then, in those early days, the spark was there their song “Wake Me Carolina” still blows me away today.īut that was just the beginning. The first time I heard Blue Cactus, they weren’t Blue Cactus yet. We’ve got a terrific music scene here in Chapel Hill-Carrboro - to quote the Yardarm, “There’s too many bands in this town!” - and with all that talent around, it can be hard to stand out.

With a high lonesome twang, an Emmylou-like southern drawl, and blistering guitar techniques, Stranger Again exercises the honky-tonk muscles to firmly bear the flag for a new generation of classic country practitioners.As the host of Live & Local on 97.9 The Hill, I get the chance to meet lots of great local musicians and bands that I’d otherwise never have encountered. Their finest work yet, Blue Cactus resuscitate a fleeting style of honest-to-goodness country music considered valueless to a “new” country music where songwriting is officiated by financial analysts and teams of marketing plutocrats instead of woebegone troubadours. Throughout Stranger Again, they explore loss and longing, self-love and reckoning with personal, political and human struggles. The otherworldliness of the music is a perfect contrast to their distinctly grounded, human storytelling lyrics. Stranger Again is a deep dive into Cosmic American music, with the band taking their sound into ambitious new planes, where country-rock meets light psychedelia as the soaring vocals meet twangy slide-guitars and propulsive bass-lines. The album has received enthusiastic attention from tastemakers including No Depression, American Songwriter, FLOOD Magazine, Talkhouse, and INDY Week among others. Blue Cactus, the North Carolina duo of Steph Stewart and Mario Arnez, make Cosmic Americana: A blend of grit, glitz, groove, and twang that evokes a celestial soundscape of mid-century heartbreak.įollowing their critically acclaimed 2017 debut and a string of singles in 2020, their evolution is made plain on the sophomore LP, Stranger Again, released in May 2021 on Sleepy Cat Records.

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