Joshua Radin digs deep for authenticity on Here, Right Now

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      Joshua Radin has never been a particularly “topical” songwriter. What he is, however, is a human being with a conscience, and also a citizen of the United States.

      As such, Radin couldn’t help but be affected by observing how his country’s government deals with the refugees and would-be migrants who turn up at the U.S.–Mexico border yearning to breathe free.

      “I started seeing a lot of footage on the news of all of these children being separated from their families at the border,” Radin says when the Straight reaches him at home in Los Angeles. “I’m not a very political person. I never have been, but something just struck me to my core when I was watching this news footage, and I ended up turning it off after watching for a while.”

      He could switch off his TV set, but his heart wasn’t so easily shut down, so Radin did the thing that comes most naturally to him: he wrote a song. “What Would You Do (Refugee Song)” closes the tunesmith’s eighth and most recent studio album, Here, Right Now, which is due out on October 4.

      “What would you do if you saw I was torn/From the love of my mother’s hands?” he sings. “What would you do if the clothes I had worn/Were ripped from me where I stand?”

      Writing the song gave Radin an opportunity to step into someone else’s shoes. “I just thought, ‘Well, let me see if I can try to write from somebody else’s perspective—somebody I don’t even know, who has had completely different experiences than I have in my life,’ ” he explains. “Because most of my songs have been extremely personal and introspective, and basically like journal entries that I’ve set to music.”

      That indeed describes most of the tracks on Here, Right Now. Sonically, the record is arguably Radin’s most expansive, swinging from the feather-light fragility of “You Got Me Thinking” to the summer-hazed shimmer-pop of “Going With You”.

      Radin places a premium on authenticity, noting that even if he sometimes has to dig uncomfortably deep to deliver that to his audiences, it’s worth it. “When I go see people perform, I so rarely see people that I really believe, you know what I mean?” he says. “And when I do, I just feel like it’s magic. And so I strive for that. Before I play each song I really try to get in the headspace of where I was, mentally, when I wrote the song.”

      When he can connect with those feelings within himself and convey them to others, Radin says, it can be a healing experience.

      “It’s almost like there’s a poison and you have to get it out,” he says. “I’ve never been to therapy. Probably because I’ve been doing this for a while now, and this sort of feels like my therapy. So I’ve never felt the need to go talk to someone. If I’m going through something, I just write it out.”

      Joshua Radin plays the Rio Theatre on Thursday (September 19).

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