| Rock, Soul |
Broken Souvenirs: Bywater Call Turns the Road Into a Home
Coming off a year that saw the seven-piece play more than 130 shows across eleven countries, the band hasn’t made an album about touring so much as an album that carries touring in its bones, its intimacy, its exhaustion, its flashes of joy, and its accumulated losses all folded into eleven songs that never once feel like filler.
What immediately separates Bywater Call from the crowded field of contemporary roots-soul acts is how little they seem interested in picking a lane. Fronted by vocalist Meghan Parnell and guitarist Dave Barnes, who first started writing together almost by accident, tasked with filling a short opening set with original material back in 2017, the band has grown into a genuinely collaborative seven-piece machine: Bruce McCarthy’s drums and percussion, Mike Meusel’s bass, newest member Andrew Moljgun on keys, and the horn pairing of Stephen Dyte (trumpet, valve trombone) and Julian Nalli (saxophone). Broken Souvenirs puts all of that interplay on full display, moving from horn-driven grooves to hushed acoustic laments without ever sounding like a band trying on different costumes. It sounds, instead, like seven musicians who have played together so often that genre distinctions have simply stopped mattering to them.
Produced by Barnes and Patric McGroarty at Palace Studios in Toronto, the album’s palette draws on a wide and well-chosen set of touchstones, Black Pumas and Alabama Shakes on the modern end, Otis Redding and Sly & the Family Stone further back, with a clear line running through Tedeschi Trucks Band’s blend of soul-rock muscle and songwriting patience. But Broken Souvenirs never sounds like a mood board. It sounds like a band who absorbed those influences years ago and has since built something recognizably their own out of them.
What gives Broken Souvenirs its emotional backbone is something the band has kept relatively quiet about in press materials: the album is dedicated to two people close to the band who were lost during its making. That dedication doesn’t turn the record into a grief album, exactly, there’s too much groove, too much genuine warmth in these arrangements for that, but it explains the record’s recurring undertow of resilience and quiet reckoning. “Is This Thing On?” is the clearest expression of it, a stripped-back, almost folk-lament of a song built on fingerpicked acoustic guitar that pulls back the curtain on what life on the road actually costs a touring musician, emotionally as much as physically. It’s a brave choice to place so early in the tracklist, and it pays off, everything that follows carries a little more weight because of it.
That same current runs quietly under “Clutter,” which trades the album’s horns for banjo and acoustic guitar and becomes one of the record’s most understated, empathetic moments, and under “Sally,” which somehow pairs real melancholy with one of the catchiest choruses on the whole album, a neat trick that speaks to just how strong the band’s songwriting has become. “Way to Go,” the album’s focus track, takes the theme in a more defiant direction: a song about self-determination and quiet resilience that opens in stripped-back fashion before the full band comes crashing in, and it’s arguably the clearest distillation of everything Broken Souvenirs does well in under four and a half minutes.
For all its introspective moments, Broken Souvenirs is just as convincing when it lets loose. “Hold Me Down” opens the record with a full-hearted, high-energy blast of vintage soul that immediately establishes Parnell’s vocal command, a voice that critics have reasonably compared to Susan Tedeschi and Amy Winehouse, but which carries its own distinct grit and control, capable of turning on a dime from a whisper to a full-throated wail. “So Far” is where Dyte and Nalli’s horn section gets to stretch out most, layering funk-inflected brass over a groove thick enough to carry the song’s harmonies without ever feeling crowded, a genuine showcase for just how much colour this seven-piece lineup can generate without losing focus. “No One Else,” “Only,” and “Ain’t No Friend of Mine” round out the album’s more immediate, hook-driven side, each one built around a groove sturdy enough to carry Parnell’s vocal without ever competing for space with it.
The album’s back half saves some of its strongest material for last. “How Long” builds into a slow-burning, horn-and-synth-laced ache that closes out its stretch of the record with real gravity, and “Yardsale,” the closing track, sends the album off with the same blend of personal storytelling and melodic instinct that defines the record’s best moments, less a triumphant finale than a quiet, satisfied exhale.
Coming on the heels of Shepherd, which Classic Rock named its Blues Album of the Year, and the acclaimed 2025 live record Sunshine, Broken Souvenirs doesn’t play it safe just because the band has momentum. If anything, it leans further into the emotional specificity that has always set Bywater Call apart from a crowded field of roots-revival acts, proof that a band with this much collective chemistry doesn’t need to chase a single genre to sound completely, unmistakably like themselves. With a third consecutive UK Blues Awards nomination for International Act of the Year already behind them and an extensive international tour ahead, Broken Souvenirs isn’t just a strong new chapter for Bywater Call, it’s the sound of a band that has figured out exactly what makes them worth following on the road.
Frankie Pfeiffer
Editor in chief – PARIS-MOVE
PARIS-MOVE, August 21st, 2026
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Tracklisting:
1.Hold Me Down 03:22
2.Is This Thing On 03:33
3.No One Else 03:11
4.Only 04:19
5.Way To Go 04:07
6.So Far 02:49
7.Clutter 04:12
8.Sally 03:32
9.How Long 04:52
10.Ain’t No Friend Of Mine 03:19
11.Yardsale 03:48
UPCOMING TOUR DATES:
8/24 – Evanston, IL – SPACE
8/26 – Lincoln, NE – Zoo Bar
8/27 – Omaha, NE – The B. Bar
8/28 – Paola, KS – Paola Roots Festival
8/29 – West Plaines, MO – Shenanigan’s
8/30 – Evansville, IN – Mojo’s Boneyard
9/3 – St Catharine’s, ON, Canada – Warehouse Concert Hall
9/5 – Midland, ON, Canada – Midland Cultural Centre
9/6 – Etwell, ON, Canada – Etwell Concert Series
9/12 – Hamilton, ON, Canada – Mills Hardware
9/13 – Guelph, ON, Canada – Sonic Hall
9/15 – Ottawa, ON, Canada – History^
9/16 – Fredericton, NB, Canada – Harvest Music Festival
9/23 – Burlington, VT – Higher Ground
9/24 – Belleville, ON, Canada – Southside Productions
9/25 – Palmer Rapids, ON, Canada – Highlands Festival
9/27 – Morrisburg, ON, Canada – Harmony Concerts
10/13 – Scarborough, ME – Brickhouse
10/14 – Portsmouth, NH – Jimmy’s Jazz and Blues
10/15 – Northampton, MA – Iron Horse
10/16 – Plymouth, MA – Spire Centre
10/17 – Shirley, MA – Bull Run
10/18 – Pawling, NY – Daryl’s House
10/20 – New York, NY – Bleeker Bell
10/21 – Sellersville, PA – Sellersville Theatre
10/22 – Elkton, MD – Elkton Music Hall
10/23 – Jim Thorpe, PA – Mauch Chunk Opera House
10/28 – Albuquerque, NM – KiMo Theatre #
10/29 – Flagstaff, AZ – Orpheum Theatre #
10/30 – Phoenix, AZ – Celebrity Theatre #
11/1 – Tucson, AZ – Rialto Theatre #
11/3 – Grand Junction, CO – Mesa Theatre #
11/5 – Colorado Springs, CO – Phil Long Music Hall #
11/6 – Ft Collins, CO – Aggie Theatre #
11/7 – Boulder, CO – Boulder Theatre #
11/20 – Westport, ON, Canada – Cove Inn
# Supporting Joanne Shaw Taylor