In each song she creates, Nicole Atkins reveals her incredible power
to transport listeners to a much more charmed time and space. On her
new album Italian Ice, the New Jersey-bred singer/songwriter conjures
the romance and danger and wild magic of a place especially close to
her heart: the Jersey Shore in all its scrappy beauty. Inspired by the
boardwalk’s many curiosities—the crumbling Victorian mansions, the
lurid and legendary funhouse, the Asbury Park rock-and-roll scene she
played a key part in reviving—Atkins ultimately transforms her
neverending fascination into a wonderland of her own making. “When
you’re on the boardwalk there’s a feeling that anything can happen,
and that’s the feeling I tried to create with this record,” Atkins
says. “I wanted to give people something they can put on and buy into
a fantasy that gets them excited about what might happen in their own
lives.” For help in capturing the shore’s kinetic spirit, Atkins
assembled a studio band whose lineup feels almost mythical. Recorded
at the iconic Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama, Italian Ice finds
the Nashville-based artist joined by Spooner Oldham and David Hood
(both members of The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, who played on
classic records from the likes of Aretha Franklin and Etta James),
Binky Griptite of The Dap Kings, Jim Sclavunos and Dave Sherman of The
Bad Seeds, and drummer McKenzie Smith (St. Vincent, Midlake). With
special guests including Spoon frontman Britt Daniel, Seth Avett of
The Avett Brothers, Erin Rae, and John Paul White, the album is a
testament to Atkins’s uncommon talent for uniting musicians of
radically different sensibilities. “I just invited all my best musical
friends to be there with me, and then we roped in Spooner and David
too,” says Atkins, who connected with the two musicians after
performing at Oldham’s birthday bash. “Musically, it doesn’t make any
sense. But I’m a superfan of all of them, and we ended up with the
weirdest, craziest band ever. It just became this awesome misfit
party.” Co-produced by Atkins and Ben Tanner of Alabama Shakes,
Italian Ice makes brilliant use of its Alist personnel, unfolding in a
kaleidoscopic sound that Atkins likens to “an acid trip through my
record collection.” At turns as opulent as symphonic pop and gritty as
garage punk, the album wanders into shades of psych-rock and
honky-tonk and girl-group melodrama, endlessly spotlighting the
tightly honed musicianship and unbridled originality at heart of
Atkins’s artistry. “I didn’t really censor myself much,” she points
out. “Everything that felt good to say or hear or feel coming back off
the speakers, I just went for it.” Right from its very first seconds,
Italian Ice hints at a deeper purpose behind that feel-good
ethos. With its soulful harmonies and soaring string lines, the
album-opening “AM Gold” speaks truth on the horrors of global warming
and the corrosive effects of social media (sample lyric: “We’re
stranded in the garbage of Eden/We’re starvin’ what we should’ve been
feedin’”), yet simultaneously makes a case for music as a potent
antidote to despair. “The world can be in so much chaos, like it is
today, but whenever I go home and get in my parents’ car and turn on
the radio to some Bobby Vinton or Frankie Valli song, everything feels
okay,” says Atkins. “For a few minutes you’re just drifting away on
this dreamy sound that makes you feel so warm and held and comforted.”
From there, Italian Ice presents a pair of back-to-back tracks that
channel Atkins’s untamed imagination into moments of sonic
transcendence. Co-written with My Morning Jacket’s Carl Broemel, “Mind
Eraser” matches its silvery textures and ethereal guitar work with
flashes of surrealist poetry lifted straight from her hyperactive
dream life. Meanwhile, “Domino” finds Atkins pushing genre boundaries
to glorious effect, working with songwriter/producer Dex Green to
carve out a groove-heavy pop gem. “We were talking about French
electro and I told Dex how I wished I could have a song that sounds
like that,” Atkins recalls. “He sent me over a beat he constructed and
we ended up coming up with something almost like a Prince song or
‘Miss You’ from the Stones— that same kind of strut.” And in her
smoothly delivered lyrics to “Domino,” Atkins serves up something of a
mission statement for living fully in troubled times: “I’m not gonna
play/Safe and sound/When the world comes tumblin’, tumblin’ down.”
Although Atkins embodies a bold self-possession for much of Italian
Ice, the album also has its share of tenderhearted offerings, such as
the sweetly slow-burning “Forever”—a song sparked from an impromptu
meeting with Kelvin Holly (longtime guitarist for Little Richard). “We
were outside smoking a cigarette at Spooner Oldham’s birthday party
and just hit it off,” says Atkins. “He asked how I met my husband, and
I told him how he’d been my tour manager and then said something like,
‘I smelled him and he smelled like forever.’ And Kelvin told me,
‘Well, that’s a song right there.’” Another candid expression of
unconditional love, “Captain” features guest vocals from Daniel,
emerging as a beautifully lilting ballad duet. “Britt came down to the
studio and we sat on the back porch and worked out the parts, then
just went in sang it live,” says Atkins, who co-wrote “Captain” with
Broemel. “It’s about how a lot of times in my life, I’ve needed people
to take care of me, but now I’ve become much stronger. The song is me
saying to my husband: ‘I got this. Just rest for a little bit and let
me take care of you.’” Elsewhere on Italian Ice, Atkins showcases her
gifts as a storyteller, like on the fantastically rambling
road-warrior confessional “Never Goin’ Home Again” (a track written
with Sclavunos and Daniel). “We’ve got so many crazy tour stories, so
we decided to string them all together into one song that everyone can
dance to and laugh about,” says Atkins. While those stories include
“seeing aliens and blowing up a minivan and waking up in somebody’s
daughter’s bed,” as Atkins puts it, one of the most jarring tales
involves the time she stumbled into a sinkhole in a Knoxville parking
lot. “I woke up at the bottom and my old keyboard player had to jump
in and lift me out, and it really flipped my perspective on a lot of
shit,” she says. Perhaps most profoundly, the incident inspired Atkins
to focus on filling her life with the people and experiences that
bring her the most joy—a turning point that led directly to the
abundance of collaborations on Italian Ice. An album entirely
unrestrained in feeling, Italian Ice closes out with one of its most
gut-punching tracks: “In the Splinters,” an epically defiant finale
co-penned with Hamilton Leithauser. “When Hurricane Sandy happened, a
lot of our area got destroyed,” says Atkins of the song’s origins. “It
was really traumatizing, but the upshot was how everybody came
together afterward. I think as long as you’re alive and with the
people you love, it really doesn’t matter what you have.” Describing
her time at Muscle Shoals as “like summer camp, but in the winter,”
Atkins looks back on the recording process with deep fondness for the
camaraderie she helped create among so many disparate
musicians. During that time, the band stayed together in a nearby
lakehouse, cooked breakfast for each other every morning, and spent
their nights playing dice in a local bar. “This record taught me that
making music for music’s sake and seeing what happens is where the
good shit comes from,” she says. “I feel like I’ve written some of my
best stuff just feeling happy and confident and enjoying the company
of who I’m playing with.” For Atkins, that shift in approach marks a
full-circle moment in her trajectory as an artist. “My whole life,
music was the only thing I ever really cared about,” she says. “When I
was a kid I couldn’t get into sports, couldn’t get into school, but
music was something I always wanted to know everything about. I never
gave up on it, even when I felt like it was kind of failing me.” And
in reflecting on the making of Italian Ice, Atkins returns to her
eternal kinship with the Jersey Shore. “There’s this great quote about
Asbury Park that I feel very connected to,” she says. “It’s something
about how music was the thing that kept Asbury Park alive—even when
the whole town was burned out and everyone moved away, music was the
heartbeat that kept it going. I was thinking about that around the
time I was making this record and I thought, ‘That’s just like my
life.’”