Carbon Leaf’s fifteenth studio album, Time is the Playground is both a call to action and an embrace of the moment. Marrying nostalgic storytelling to nuanced, folk-infused indie rock, the Richmond, Virginia band embroiders heartfelt melody and harmony with acoustic and electric instrumentation to create a 12-song rumination on time, love and personal growth that’s equal parts urgent epiphany and contented exhalation.
“Everybody says people don’t listen to albums anymore,” mulled Carbon Leaf frontman Barry Privett, holed up in a coastal cottage. “So, the challenge for us was to make something that felt good to get through from beginning to end … to listen to like a story.”
Originally formed as a college cover band in 1992 and with over 3,500 famously enthused live shows together, Carbon Leaf helped to define the aughts indie rock that they ultimately outgrew and outlasted. They first earned national recognition with “The Boxer,” a song that won the American Music Awards 2002 New Music Award and made Carbon Leaf the first unsigned band to perform before millions on the AMAs.
“The Boxer” entered regular radio rotation, Carbon Leaf’s tours grew bigger and better, and within a couple of years they quit their day jobs and inked a record deal. The band’s fanbase snowballed, drawn to their infectious spirit of commitment, empathy, communion, and selfreliance – not to mention supremely crafted songs with ultra-relatable, thought-provoking lyrics.
After a trio of charting albums for Vanguard Records, multiple songwriting awards and headlining shows, Carbon Leaf opted to return to the complete creative control of their indie roots. Guitarist Terry Clark, who co-founded the band with Privett and multi-instrumentalist Carter Gravatt, converted his garage into the band’s Two-Car Studio, where they’ve recorded releases for their own Constant Ivy imprint ever since. Carbon Leaf’s DIY spirit even extended to re-recording their three Vanguard albums in order to regain the rights.
Due in September, Time is the Playground is Carbon Leaf’s first full-length album in a decade, during which they released two EPS and a 27-song live performance album and Blu-ray. Time is the Playground gathers the best of songs written, in fits and starts, over 15 years, alongside brand new ideas. Privett dusted off old demos and shut himself away for months to finish their stories, while also honing recent compositions. With Clark engineering, Carbon Leaf – completed by longtime bassist Jon Markel and drummer Jesse Humphrey – spent a year and a half recording and mixing the resulting songs.
“Thinking about these disparate pieces of music, I began ruminating on time itself,” Privett recalled. “The band’s been together a long time. You mature a bit and see yourself in place on the timeline … rolling around the scenes of love and growth.”
Masterfully melding saturated AC/DC guitar and squelchy Cars synth, “Backmask 1983” is a fun flipbook of evocative era emblems – Farah Fawcett, “Satanic Panic,” Time Life Books, Bigfoot and more – that traverses the simultaneous nexus of Privett’s childhood/adolescence and the world’s analog/digital ages. It’s about morphing into a new person and a new planet with wideeyed wonder and a longing to believe. “Without a whole lot of information, the mystery of things felt so heightened,” recalled Privett of growing up pre-Internet. “I wanted to capture some of that but also have fun with it.”
“I want what we create to resonate with ourselves, to the level that we want to play it for a long time to come, and where we want others to hear it and experience it,” Privett concluded. “Hopefully, listeners can glean the pieces from it that they identify with.”
Time is the Playground will be accompanied by the tireless touring almost synonymous with Carbon Leaf, who’ve become a model for self-managing bands in the digital landscape.