Neptune City by Nicole Atkins

Neptune City, Nicole Atkins' album for Columbia, came out on October 30, 2007, with Tore Johansson producing, and it's chamber pop dressed up for a night out in some other era. She named it in Bilow's, a bar her family used to go to in Neptune City, New Jersey, pitching the title half as a reply to Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and loving how ominous and watery it sounded. Neptune City is actually its own town, just east of Neptune, where she was born.

The water runs all through it. Atkins grew up in Shark River Hills, overlooking the Shark River, and the rain on the river turns up in the title track. The arrangements are lush and sweeping, built around that deep alto, and the influences are right on the sleeve: old-school crooners, psychedelia, soul and Brill Building craft, with critics reaching for Roy Orbison. It climbed to number six on Billboard's Top Heatseekers chart.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.