Album Notes

"Hello Cruel World" is the third release from Mars Arizona on Big Barn Records distributed by Burnside Distribution.

David "Dawg" Grisman makes sparks fly from his mandolin on the opening track "Dirty Town," resplendent in its identification of the wayward coping mechanisms of small town barfly alcoholics. His son Sam Grisman pushes the tune into the red line with his thundering upright bass. The genius of Al Perkins on pedal steel haunts "Circus," a tune that shakes its head in disbelief at the freak show fairground bazaar that America's politicians have constantly toured the highways of humanity with. Or so it seems. Storto sets off on her own with "Good To Be Lucky" – her crisp and world-wise vocals taking inspiration from Mark Twain's famous words: "Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over." Storto's voice hauntingly reminds us that the huge gulf between those privileged few and the masses below might just owe a thing or two to luck. Neil Young's "Time Fades Away", T Rex's "By the Light of the Magical Moon" and Loretta Lynn's "Blue Kentucky Girl" are put through the Mars Arizona sweet and sour smoothie maker. Paul and Nicole know their musical history books and these inspired covers glide, grate and grind in all the right places. The trauma of death and loss speaks softly and poignantly on "Wait For The River." "Landscape (for NOLA)" highlights Mars Arizona's creative compassion with a tune based on Paul's father's first hand observation of the devastation in New Orleans, after Katrina. This haunting original, complemented by Perkins' pedal steel, brings it all down to the personal.