Neighbor Lady

Georgia quartet Neighbor Lady put a noir-ish alt-country spin on reflective indie rock with help from dreamy reverb, drawling guitar, and the natural twang of lead singer Emily Braden. Their first album, Maybe Later, saw release in 2018. They sauntered into more faded, vintage-sounding atmospheres with the follow-up, 2022's For the Birds. Also the band's main songwriter, Braden moved to Athens after high school and began Neighbor Lady as a solo project before meeting guitarist/keyboardist Jack Blauvelt (Dana Swimmer). Their debut single, "Consider Me Mean," appeared in 2016. The following year, the project settled into the lineup of Braden, Blauvelt, bassist Merideth Hanscom (Semicircle), and drummer Andrew McFarland (Reptar), and they began accepting invitations to festivals including AthFest and Savannah Stopover. In the meantime, the group moved their base to Atlanta. Neighbor Lady's self-recorded debut, Maybe Later, arrived in May 2018 on the Friendship Fever label. With Payton Collier replacing Hanscom on bass, Neighbor Lady headed back to the studio, this time with producer Jason Kingsland (Belle and Sebastian, Courtney Marie Andrews). They finished tracking their second album just before pandemic lockdowns in 2020, but spent much of the ensuing period off the road tweaking arrangements and experimenting with re-recordings. They enlisted Noah Georgeson (Joanna Newsom, Cate Le Bon, Devendra Banhart) to mix the resulting fine-tuned atmospheres of For the Birds. The album arrived on Park the Van in July 2022.
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