Aurora

by Daisy Jones & the Six

Overview

Set in the 1970s and loosely inspired by Fleetwood Mac, Taylor Jenkins Reid's best-selling novel Daisy Jones & the Six is the fictional account of the rise and fall of a prominent blues-rock band as revealed through interviews. An Amazon Studios miniseries adaptation was already underway by the time the book was published in 2019, with producers enlisting Blake Mills to construct the band's sound. To write the songs (25 in all appear in the series), Mills enlisted help from none other than Jackson Browne as well as figures like Phoebe Bridgers, Marcus Mumford, Madison Cunningham, and Roger Manning, among many others. The emerging 11-song soundtrack album doubles as the group's imagined debut, Aurora. It was performed by the show's band-camp-trained cast, led by Riley Keough as Daisy and Sam Claflin as Billy Dunne. (Suki Waterhouse, Josh Whitehouse, Will Harrison, and Sebastian Chacon round out the group's TV lineup, which diverges slightly from the book in number and by instrument.) Together with Mills' production, the star-studded writing team manage to settle into a dual-vocal-heavy MOR sound that's credible as the output of a single band at the same time that it touches on Laurel Canyon, Nashville, and, if fleetingly, Fleetwood Mac itself, as on the chorus of soft rock standout "Let Me Down Easy," a descendent of "Dreams." Another highlight is the rousing "Regret Me," which almost evokes the Heartbreakers with its efficient hooks, gritty guitar tones, organ, live energy, and slight affectation by Claflin. They let loose again with the bluesy garage rock of the Keough-led "More Fun to Miss," while quasi-acoustic ballads like "Two Against Three" and the trite "No Words" ("There ain't no words for the song I'm trying to write/Oh, I just don't know the words, babe, for what I'm trying to write/Everything I've tried so far, babe, doesn't feel right") can seem more like sentimental, narrative-serving fare -- not that that's necessarily a bad thing, considering their purposes. In the end, while Aurora plays out more like a cast album than unearthed period vinyl, it does hover on the spectrum, and the actor/musicians come to play while songs suggest the intended period Los Angeles music scene, if they rarely stand strong enough on their own to create their own legend. ~ Marcy Donelson

Product Details

Release Date:	12/01/2023
Label:	Atlantic
UPC:	0075678612978

Tracks

1. Aurora
2. Let Me Down Easy
3. Kill You to Try
4. Two Against Three
5. Look at Us Now (Honeycomb)
6. Regret Me
7. You Were Gone
8. More Fun to Miss
9. Please
10. The River
11. No Words

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Daisy Jones & the Six   Primary Artist,Vocals
Maren Morris   Primary Artist,Vocals
Marcus Mumford   Primary Artist,Vocals
Six   Primary Artist
Daisy Jones   Primary Artist,Vocals,Featured Artist
The Dunne Brothers   Primary Artist
Demi Lovato   Primary Artist,Vocals
Madison Cunningham   Guitar,Vocals (Background)
Abe Rounds   Drums
Suki Waterhouse   Vocals
Maddy Baltor   Vocals (Background)
Riley Keough   Vocals,Vocals (Background)
Benny Bock   Piano
Sam Claflin   Vocals,Vocals (Background)
Blake Mills   Bass,Drums,Organ,Piano,Tiple,Guitar,Harmonium,Keyboards,Percussion,Vocals (Background)
Pino Palladino   Bass
Z Berg   Vocals (Background)
Matt Chamberlain   Percussion
Stuart Johnson   Drums,Percussion
Simone Jackson   Vocals,Featured Artist
Kane Ritchotte   Drums,Percussion
Nicki Bluhm   Vocals,Vocals (Background)
Tyler Chester   Organ,Synthesizer,Piano (Electric)
Roger Manning   Organ,Clavinet,Wurlitzer,Tack Piano
James Petralli   Vocals,Handclapping,Vocals (Background)
Ethan Gruska   Piano (Electric)
Aaron Embry   Organ

Technical Credits

Jonathan Rice   Composer
Ali Tamposi   Composer
Joseph Lorge   Mixing,Engineer
Joseph Khoury   A&R
Patricia Sullivan   Mastering
Will Maclellan   Engineer,Recording
Kayslee Collins   Composer
Maddy Baltor   Assistant Engineer
Ashleigh Collins   Composer
Greg Koller   Mastering,Recording,Engineer
Jason Boesel   Composer
Blake Mills   Mixing,Composer,Producer
Z Berg   Composer
Matt Sweeney   Composer
Ron Wood   Composer
Brandon Davis   A&R,Producer
Chris Weisman   Composer
Johnathan Rice   Composer
James Valentine   Composer
Stephony Smith   Composer
Pete Ganbarg   A&R
Ronnie Lane   Composer
Barbara Gruska   Composer
Elizabeth Berg   Composer
Taylor Goldsmith   Composer
Marcus Mumford   Composer
Ethan Gruska   Composer
Tony Berg   Producer
Joe Keefe   Composer
Cass McCombs   Composer