Summary

The author of the article has discovered and fallen in love with The Cactus Blossoms' new album "One Day," which they found to be a diverse and captivating collection of Americana music.

Abstract

The author, who is embarking on a challenge to listen to 100 new albums in 2022, was captivated by The Cactus Blossoms' latest release, "One Day." Despite initially being unfamiliar with the Americana genre, the author was pleasantly surprised by the album's blend of country, roots-rock, folk, bluegrass, R&B, and blues. After hearing the band's performance on "Twin Peaks: The Return," the author finally explored more of their music and was immediately hooked, playing the album multiple times. The 31-minute-long "One Day" left a strong impression, with every track resonating and leading the author to award it 4 out of 5 stars.

Opinions

The author had a positive predisposition towards The Cactus Blossoms after seeing them perform "Mississippi" on "Twin Peaks: The Return."
The album "One Day" exceeded the author's expectations, with its Americana classification encompassing a variety of musical styles.
The author was impressed by the quality of the music throughout the entire album, with no tracks considered dislikable.
"Hey Baby," "Is It Over," "Runaway," and "I Could Almost Cry" are highlighted as standout tracks on the album.
The author recommends "One Day" to readers looking for new music and rates it highly, indicating that it is worth listening to.
The author suggests following other music writers on Medium for additional music-related content and recommendations.
The author encourages readers to consider a Medium membership to fully access music stories and support writers.

It Only Took ‘One Day’ For Me to Love The Cactus Blossoms

Album Review #2 0f 100: ‘One Day’ by The Cactus Blossoms

Image source: Walkie Talkie Records via Amazon.com

One of the main reasons I decided to do the 100 New Albums In 2022 Challenge created by Nia Simone McLeod was because I was hoping to discover and fall in love with both old and new music that I was unfamiliar with.

In my first entry in this series, I listened to and reviewed Elvis Presley’s debut album from 1956. Even though I was already familiar with a lot of Elvis’ music, I only knew a few of the songs from that album before I listened to it.

I ended up loving most of the songs I’d previously been unfamiliar with — so this challenge started off very, very nicely for me.

Since my plan is to alternate between old and new music for this challenge, I then decided to jump forward in time to 2022. When I looked through a list of new album releases for February 11, 2022, I saw One Day by The Cactus Blossoms on the list.

As soon as I saw it there, I knew I wanted to give it a listen. I’d been meaning to check out The Cactus Blossoms’ music since I saw them performing their song “Mississippi” on the TV series Twin Peaks: The Return back in 2017. When I saw them doing it on there, I instantly liked the song and told myself that I should check out more music by them sometime soon.

Well, “soon” turned out to be five years for me — but I finally did it. On the day that their One Day album was released, I gave it a listen.

Then I immediately listened to it again.

And then one more time later that day.

Since then, I’ve listened to it several more times. Needless to say, I’m not playing it over and over again because I think it sucks. I loved it right from the opening track:

Hey Baby

When I initially saw the album was classified in the Americana music genre, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Honestly, I wasn’t 100% what Americana music was, though I had a feeling it might have sort of a country sound to it. Some of the songs on the album do have that kind of sound, but there’s a lot more going on than just country. I decided to look up “Americana” on Wikipedia and here’s how they defined it:

Americana, as defined by the Americana Music Association (AMA), is “contemporary music that incorporates elements of various American roots music styles, including country, roots-rock, folk, bluegrass, R&B and blues, resulting in a distinctive roots-oriented sound that lives in a world apart from the pure forms of the genres upon which it may draw.”

Yes. That summed up perfectly the different kinds of awesome music I heard and quickly fell in love with on the One Day album.

It’s only 31 minutes long — but there’s a lot of great music in those 31 minutes! In fact, there’s not a song on the album that I don’t like.

“Hey Baby” and these next three songs are my current favorites on the album.

Is It Over

Runaway

I Could Almost Cry

If you’re looking for some great new music to listen to, I highly recommend the One Day album by The Cactus Blossoms. Out of five possible stars, I give it…drumroll, please…4 stars!

Image created by Penelope Mayfield on Canva.com

If you’re a music junkie like I am, I highly recommend following these fine and talented fellow music fans/writers on Medium. They consistently entertain and educate me with articles about music that they love:

Kevin Alexander, Nicole Brown, Paul Combs, Terry Barr, Critical Country, Alex Markham, David Acaster, Steven Hale, Angelina Der Arakelian, Jessica Lee McMillan, Alexander Briseño, Rui Alves, Bonnie Barton, Paul Mansfield, and Sarah Paris.

Thank you for reading! If you enjoy stories on Medium but are limited in the amount you can read because you don’t have a membership, please consider joining so you can gain full access to every story from myself and thousands of other writers. If you’d like to join, here is my referral link. Have a nice day!