Thoughtful lyrics, catchy melodies, and layers of sound inform the endlessly listenable songs on Dive Deep, singer/songwriter Andrew Belle’s latest album, which dropped August 25. The Chicago native began his recording career relying primarily on acoustic guitar to shape his sounds. Despite achieving success with his folk-centric debut record The Ladder in 2010, by 2013, Belle had grown tired of his troubadour bent and began experimenting with keyboards and electronic drums.
“When I set out to make my second record, called Black Bear, which is now four years old, my tastes just began to shift,” said Belle in a recent phone interview with the Santa Barbara Independent. “I kind of got burned out on my acoustic guitar; I was feeling sort of limited as far as songwriting goes on that instrument. I had bought some recording software and stuff to play around with on my computer with a keyboard, and I started getting into that. When I started exploring digital electronic instruments, it just opened up this whole realm for me in terms of songwriting that I hadn’t tapped into before.”
Dive Deep delivers 11 resonant tracks that take the listener on an engaging auditory journey, picking up where Black Bear left off. “[Black Bear] and this record are sonically pretty similar,” he said of Dive Deep’s musical undercurrent. “I made them with the same team of people. The only difference is that they’re four years apart, and so maybe things are a little tighter. We have a little bit more of a clarified vision on how we wanted it to sound.”