Joelton Mayfield - Crowd Pleaser
2025 • BLOODSHOT RECORDS • ALT COUNTRY / INDIE
79/100
Joelton Mayfield’s debut, Crowd Pleaser, is a true labor of love. The labor is evident in the meticulously crafted songwriting; it sounds like Mayfield obsessed over getting his message just right. Along with the rich instrumentation, Mayfield sings about grappling with the loss of faith and place in the modern world. He uses powerful, often biblical, language to conjure amazing pictures, like "Heaven’s indignation bleach blurs to yellow,” and deliver devastating blows such as, “You liked to listen to his stories/ until you have none of your own.”
As for the love, the album is bursting with palpable chemistry. Even while singing about serious subjects—love, faith, death, and family—there are so many moments that reveal the fun and teamwork they share playing together: a siren whistle at just the right moment on “Turpentine (You Know The One),” the warm hug of Bennet Littlejohn’s pedal steel guitar throughout the record, and the perfectly melded vocal harmonies between Mayfield and vocalist Paula Ramirez. There is a moment in the song “Speechwriter” where Mayfield sings, “There’s a girl I know / who shows up two chords later,” and Ramirez, true to his word, enters exactly two chords later.
Mayfield has surrounded himself with a stellar band of incredible musicians. While the slow burn of “Jacob Dreamed a Staircase,” featuring Mayfield tenderly singing over Elliott Smith-esque double-tracked guitars, is absolutely lovely, I find myself gravitating more to the full-band affairs like “Turpentine” or “Now.” The comparison is stark: these songs possess a palpable exuberance and feature an absolute boost in the confidence of his sound. Mayfield is the friend who becomes the life of the party when his friends are around him. He's the confident rookie who realizes he's playing at his best with a team of professionals and veterans at his side.
As a debut, it is wonderful that Mayfield is not afraid to let the stitches show. The record's true north points to the alt-country and indie rock of the 90s and early '00s, with plenty of banjo and pedal steel but also shrieking guitar solos and the use of field recordings to create atmosphere. Mayfield takes plenty of cues from artists like Jeff Tweedy & Wilco, Pavement, and The Mountain Goats. There are even direct references to Wilco’s “Late Greats” and The Mountain Goats’ “Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton” on the rip-roaring good time of “Turpentine.” The album opener, the noisy “Red Beam,” shows Mayfield as a true Jeff Tweedy disciple. The attention-grabbing chaos and anxiety of “Red Beam” before moving on to the single “The Shore” perfectly mirrors the way Wilco began Yankee Hotel Foxtrot with “I am Trying to Break Your Heart” and then “Kamera.”
There is no feeling of putting on different hats and costumes for each song. He doesn’t imitate; he channels. I hear the love, and I hear the songs Mayfield loves. He is not making some grand statement of arrival; he is doing what brings him joy with the people he loves. He’s not signaling his team to clear out for his long-awaited clutch isolation play. Instead, Mayfield is using the plays to get the whole team involved because he knows that he and his team are the right people to pull it off. On his debut, Mayfield makes the record he’s always wanted to make because he, with all the support alongside him, has the confidence to know he can do it.
NBA COMP: Ben Sheppard
A Rookie who found his identity as a team player when he is surrounded by a highly skilled team.