A track from the June 2026 album "Adentro del Volcan! (Into the Volcano!......a concept album).
Ex-Austinite (and now long-time resident of San MIguel de Allende, Mexico) Walter Ehresman's 24th solo album is his first "concept album."
Here's the concept:
An alien crashes on Earth, in a Louisiana swamp, with no chance to get home. Using his powers to blend in, he sets about exploring his new surroundings in a country called the USA. He encounters baffling and alarming chaos and duplicity, with those scattered humans trying to be better than their instincts and programming feeling overwhelmed and disillusioned at the behavior of those around them. Some leave their home country, conflicted, in search of a more altruistic community. In his global wanderings, our alien observers the desperate search for love amidst the crumbling world civilization.
He is stunned by those who refuse to see their situation for what it is, hiding away in churches or in meaningless virtual games.
Infiltrating the gatherings of the parasitic rich, our alien meets image consultants, agents and PR specialists who boast of their exploits--regaling him with tales of manufactured outrage on behalf of their artist clients to generate something called “clicks” and “buzz.” Caught up in this whirlwind, and plied with substances legal and not, the alien finds himself suddenly leading a punk band with a giant PR machine behind it. Soon enough, however, he recoils from his handlers and breaks free.
As ecological collapse approaches terminal velocity, our alien feels a planetary consciousness stir, as the Earth itself attempts to intervene and shake off some of the most destructive monkeys infesting its skin.
And as the alien Earth environment wears him down, our involuntary visitor feels a profound loneliness—while all that he has seen and experienced weighs heavily upon him. In his final moments, he dreams of how it might have been if the planet’s human inhabitants had only felt some sense of connection and common purpose between each other.
Ehresman tells us "I've never particularly been a fan of concept albums and, if I did like one, it tended to be because the songs were good....not because of the 'concept'.....But given that this is my 24th solo album, and I very much don't want to repeat myself, I thought this was an opportunity to see if I could put together a concept album that I makes sense to me……Now, of course, it’s up to y’all to see if you like it or if you think I've laid an egg."
As with all his solo releases, Walter handles about 98% of the vocals and instruments himself here, but with some nice flavors added by a few friends as special guests.....notably, outstanding Spanish flamenco singer Esther Asulito, who takes lead vocals on "Rompí La Cáscara de Mi Corazón" (Ehresman's second song written from scratch in Spanish, with the first--"Tu Amor de Espinas"--also being sung by Asulito on last year's "Heat Death Coda" album). The song title translates to "I Broke the Shell of My Heart," and its strong flamenco flavor (Ehresman jokingly calls in "gringo flamenco") is really striking and powerful.
Styles on the album range from Lou Reed-style rockers to alternate tuning singer/songwriter fare to Americana to the aforementioned flamenco to samba groove to electronica to Steely Dan vibes to punk to progressive to heartbreaking futuristic ballads......all in service to telling the story of our involuntary alien observer's Dante-eque travels around a US (and beyond) in the grips of late-stage capitalism.
