Chris Picco of The Long Distance Runners releases The Beach on June 04

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Chris Picco of Newfoundland’s The Long Distance Runners releases his new solo album The Beach on Tuesday, June 04.

The Beach is a masterful collection of songs from one of Newfoundland’s most admired and respected songwriters. Recorded live off the floor over two weekends in the fall of 2012, The Beach captures inspired performances from a stellar acoustic band and a songwriter at the top of his game. On this, his third solo record and first in over five years we find the charismatic front-man and chief songwriter for psychedelic rockers The Long Distance Runners getting back to his country, folk and blues roots.

Watch the video for “Real Estate Man” from The Beach:

From the strikingly vulnerable vocals and catchy choruses of the opening country number “Rodeo Girl” to the stirring hypnotic piano-heavy groove of the ghostly closing track “In Your Light”, The Beach encapsulates the past few years of Picco’s life with sincere reflections and insightful turns of phrase. Recent life changing events like marriage and fatherhood are celebrated and fearlessly acknowledged in strikingly beautiful ballads like “You’re So Real,” “Worth Believing” and“The Good Within” while family tragedy is faced with raw emotional honesty in the hauntingly poignant title track composed in memory of his late mother Catherine.

“Eminently likeable and oddly cohesive when consumed in toto as an album rather than just as, y’know, tracks.”

– The Toronto Star

“The Long Distance Runners have outdone themselves on Tracks. The album is extremely fresh, but has a reverence and respect for the classic influences that paved the road the band travels on.” – The Scope

“Tracks is a very strong and enjoyably delectable album of Canadian rock.” – PopMatters

 (Released on Tuesday, June 04)