The Sound of Spores on Steel: Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country’s New Album ‘Horizons’!
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There’s something about the rhythmic chug of a train that never quite leaves you. I grew up in the late ’70s and early ’80s with the Grand Ole Opry on in one room, Hee Haw reruns echoing from another, and the steady hum of afternoons spent at my grandparents’ house. Somewhere between the laughing fiddle breaks and the tear-jerking ballads, Americana music laid its tracks in my memory. What I didn’t know back then—what I’ve only recently come to understand—is that the same iron railroads that carried those sounds across the country also carried something stranger, older, and more subversive: mushrooms.
As trains thundered across the American frontier, they dropped splinters of spore-laced wood into the wild. Some of that was accidental—fallen timbers left behind like forgotten relics. Some of it was intentional—frontiersmen and mystics deliberately spreading psilocybin across the land like folklore. And that’s what Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country’s Horizons feels like: a psychedelic spore trail laid down in steel-stringed rhythm, country grit, and cosmic vision. It’s not just another Cosmic Country record; it’s a hallucinogenic wagon train riding westward into both memory and myth.
Departure – The Rhythmic Trail Begins
“Blame the Train” sets the tone for the album as we are off and running in a rhythmic metaphorical departure, leaving the station called “Everyday.” “Sunshine in the Rain” plays at life’s dualities at with joyful realism. I can absolutely see this being gleefully performed in a beautiful afternoon festival set somewhere. I will wholeheartedly join in the dance. “Better Deal Blues” is a classic tale of heartbreak featuring Americana tropes with clever lyricism. The gorgeous imagery of “Along the Trail” recalls a longing for home and “nature-as-guide” in an almost contemporary version of John Denver.
Visions & Voyages – The Mythic Middle
“About the Angels” talks of a metaphorical heaven where gold will not matter and harkens back to the religious Southern upbringing that so many of us share. “Yonder” is a song of promised lands, illusions of “better,” children’s laughter and dreams. “Translation” takes on the topic of emotional disconnect in one’s relationship with a modern sound and beautiful steel guitar. “Broadside Ballad” cleverly features a layered metaphor (a broadside or broadsheet newspaper used to bring the news/gossip of the day and a broadside gunship that might be used to navigate up river) and has echoes of protest or perseverance. And what’s Americana music without protest and perseverance? “Hangman’s Reel” is one of my favorite instrumental songs EVER. It sounds like a hoedown to celebrate a successful spaceship liftoff and includes the joy of pure sound.
The Cosmic Climb
“Prairie Spin” honestly sounds like prairie disco, if you can imagine that, just spinning forever in a surreal barn dance. The relational clarity, emotional honesty, and universal plea of “See Through” remind you once again of how amazing the songwriting skills are in Donato’s songs. “Chore” is perhaps the centerpiece of the journey. These are lyrics as existential poetry. The explosive second half feels like a psychedelic release, and while the title might suggest drudgery, the song quickly reveals itself as an ode to love, labor, and the psychic weight of showing up in a complicated world. If the album is a journey, “Chore” is the part where you get lost, break down, and then emerge on the other side reborn.
Arrival in the Unknown
I found “Another Dimension” to be the romantic apex of the album as it talks about love beyond time and space. The song feels grounded yet transcendent. As a proud Norwegian, I love “Valhalla,” where Viking imagery meets everyday struggle. It talks of the extraordinary effort sometimes required in ordinary life and required for entrance to Valhalla, of course. “Down Bedford” is the album’s final reflection. Not an ending, but an integration of all the mind-blowing music that we’ve just heard.
The New Horizon
This album was a journey in the best possible way: a record of trails, train tracks, stars, and sweat. Americana isn’t just nostalgia—it’s fertile ground, constantly regenerating, if we keep cultivating it actively. Daniel Donato is spreading something—spiritual, sonic, fungal—across the landscape. I hope you’ll take the time to take a sample of the new album in August or his upcoming Ryman show.
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https://www.musicfestnews.com/2025/08/daniel-donatos-cosmic-countrys-new-album-horizons/