Goa-based musician to captivate hearts with latest album of love songs

Love songs are always popular irrespective of their music genre. And, if you’d like to check some out, there’s an entire album coming up.

Bandra Records will release Love Conquers All, the new studio album from Indian-American singer/songwriter, Ranjit Arapurakal, on all streaming platforms on July 30, 2024.

No longer an emerging talent, this album marks Arapurakal as an artist who has arrived. Expect foot-stomping strumming, tight harmonies, arranged and sung by Ranjit himself, and intriguing chord changes that set this album apart from pop, folk or alternative.

Love Conquers All  is a riveting collection of eight acoustic songs from Arapurakal, once a stalwart of the NYC Indi scene, now based in Goa. The title track opens the album with a Cat Stevens-like appeal for love to prevail in our time.

This song is pure Americana, and ends with a baroque minuet about neuro-lingustic programming that is sure to raise eyebrows.

With Tennis Racquet, the listener is taken on a tryst with love at first sight, augmented by magical realism. In a country shuffle style, the song’s imagery evokes suburban New Jersey, where the singer grew up in the 80s and 90s.

Chocolate Ice Cream is a playful love song sung from the point of view of a guy who is locked down with his folks and thinks that’s cute. Ranjit’s mother does not find this song particularly amusing.

Sorry I Crashed Your Car combines Arapurakal’s penchant for bossa nova guitar styles while sharing glimpses of his real life in Goa.

His masterful vocal performance and unique melodies on this track are reminiscent of Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder. He adds that driving on the left side of the road is challenging for him and it was a really wide car.

Amanita Muscaria is a trippy, folky ode to poisonous and psychedelic mushrooms, and Christmas time and its pagan origins; a shamanic interpretation of Santa Claus as a mushroom. It was written in Northern California on Thanksgiving 2019 and is reminiscent of Nick Drake’s Pink Moon.

With The River Revisited, Arapurakal shares his vision of the state of human globalisation and calls for a return to humanistic values and respect for the mysteries of nature.

An ode to a maternal planet from a traveller who probably needs to check his own carbon footprint.

Gokarna is a timeless song for the traveller who searches the world to find something within. Evoking the vocal stylings of Cat Stevens in his prime, this song shows another dimension of Arapurakal’s voice, more Earthy and experienced than before.

The album closes with Edinburgh, a poppy acoustic love song that takes the listener from Scotland to New York City and back. Lovers of tight harmonies will love this one and play it on repeat.

Love Conquers All  will be released on all streaming platforms on July 30, 2024, with pre-saves available on Apple Music and Spotify from July 20.

The album was recorded and mixed by Sunai Marathe at the picturesque Ra Studio in Goa and mastered by Karl Sukhia.

Ranjit Arapurakal’s previous releases include 2020’s Piano Meditations, a collection of instrumental Piano reveries, Himalaya Halleluia in 2019, and Bird of Fire, the 2018 album that saw him playing all of the instruments in a full band setting.

His Greatest Hits Vol. 1 came out in 2009 and captures the songwriter’s early years as a solo artist in NYC.