Album Notes

Singer-Songwriter-multi-instrumentalist John Akin's second album with "The Naked Pilgrims". It's been almost ten years, graduate school, a couple of albums of instrumental music and a couple of dead-end day jobs since The Naked Pilgrim's first album, "Three Chord Songs"... With "Five Years in New York", John and The Naked Pilgrims may just have reached a new level of quirky-guitar-driven-pop/rock transcendence, and even if they didn't, it's still a memorable and ambitious CD... The album starts off on a funky, rollicking note with "East Side Story". Then on to the upbeat second track, "Gotta Have", an outrageous yet honest anthem of teen peer-pressure in our sex-obsessed society. Other highlights: "Simple", a straightforward yet heartfelt love song; "In The Morning", a melodic yet risqué tale of falling in love with the girl next door after she's all "grown up"; "Mary Says", a perky rocker about vicariously living through the radio; the wistful, acoustic "Wait" and "Lusting After People on the Subway", which is about, well, ...the perils of lusting after people on the subway...