Inland Years Found Pure Gold in the Pennsylvania Woods with 'Morning Train'

Finding the hours to write and track songs when you have a day job and a family is never simple. For Brooklyn songwriter Ryan Daniels, accepting that crunch shaped his whole approach for Inland Years and the album Nowadays. Instead of waiting around for open calendar blocks or polished studio setups, he took off to the woods of northeastern Pennsylvania, leaned hard into raw instinct, and let the room speak for itself.

'Morning Train' jumps right out of that low-key headspace. It moves with the easy swagger of 90s college radio, pulling from The Byrds' chiming guitars, Tony Molina's bite-sized precision, and the loose warmth of classic Pavement. Most of these ideas started out as rough voice memos on a phone. From there, Daniels tracked parts onto a Zoom R24 before dragging the files into GarageBand to pull together a mix. You get real room acoustics, genuine hiss, and none of the scrubbed-clean gloss that ruins modern guitar music.

The standout moment here comes down to a bit of practical problem-solving. Wanting the long, crying pull of a pedal steel without owning one, Daniels jacked up the nut on a beater Gretsch electric and ran a glass slide down the fretboard. That homemade rig cuts straight through the rhythm fuzz, giving the whole tune a lonesome, wandering edge that lands instantly.

The words keep things brutally simple:

Morning train broke down and never came / But what would I be late for? / There is nothing here anymore.'

It nails that weird, quiet feeling of standing on a platform after plans fall through, wondering why you were in such a rush to begin with. Released on tape via Tokyo imprint BSDJ and earning early spins on WFMU and KXLU, Inland Years proves you do not need five grand in outboard gear to hit a nerve. You just need a solid hook, some fuzz, and the patience to leave the mistakes right where they landed.