The seventh studio album from Bruce Maclean.

Recorded @ Maclean Studio in East Orleans, MA.

It’s been more than 7 years since the release(s) of ‘Kathi’ (and ‘Kathi 2’!), Bruce Maclean’s fifth and sixth studio albums. And it’s been about 2 years since a cold night in early Pandemic times, when a naïve young man — looking over a cache of recordings accumulating on Maclean’s YouTube page and inquiring about archived ProTools sessions — announced his resolute intention to stitch together and release a new album of rough-and-tumble, DIY covers and a few originals that could placate legions of impatient Bruce Maclean fans.

There’s one lesson from the half-decade of ‘Kathi’ sessions that simply was not taken to heart: Quick-and-easy never goes as planned. A concept album with the working title ‘Bad Decisions’ went through draft after draft, and its target release date kept getting pushed back, month after month — through it all, though, the goal stayed more-or-less the same. After ‘Kathi’ captured the full band sound of Maclean and a stable of very fine Cape Cod musicians with whom he regularly plays on stage, ‘Bad Decisions’ would be a bit of a throwback to the solo studio experimentation of the ‘Headshot​/​Purfek’ era. The “bad decisions” of the title is intended to reference some of the recording choices that, out of context, might sound…ill-advised (say, the idea to add the little-known lyrics to “Midnight Cowboy Theme,” or the heavy AutoTune on this cover of “Circles” – or just the endeavor to cover a Post Malone song in the first place!). The implication, though, is that none of these ideas were, in fact, bad – we all at Maclean Studio are pretty darn proud of this album!

If any “bad decision” impacted these sessions, it was probably the one that, initially at least, limited the scope of what this album could be – the idea to narrow it to a quarantine project, a one-man-band recording. Thankfully, the final cut has made room for a number of stellar features and guests whom, frankly, we can’t imagine this album succeeding without: The vocal talents of Allie Jason; the pedal steel stylings of Kevin Maul; the blistering banjo of Les Bevan; and clutch contributions from tried-and-true bandmates Ed Sheridan, Liam Hogg, and Ron Siegel. That’s not to say that a number of these tracks weren’t arranged and performed more or less solo, but it’s the mix of different approaches (and as well the mix of genres – from country, to grunge rock, to ectro-pop, to techno!) that makes ‘Bad Decisions’ the exciting ride that we hope it is. So if you like *checks notes* Jimi Hendrix, Tom T. Hall, Post Malone, Buddy Holly, John Barry, PJ O’Connell, Aaron Spade, Neil Young, Kurt Vile, Bruce Maclean… it probably won’t be a bad decision to give this album a listen!