MYND READER doesn’t enter a room quietly. They step in like they already know the story, the pitfalls, and the clichés of rock and still choose a sharper path. Their full-length, self-titled debut album out today isn’t an introduction so much as a declaration. There are no retro affectations or gimmicks here, just rock that feels lived in, music that breathes, sweats, and pauses long enough to take stock of the year, the damage, and the truth. In a culture built on singles and scrolls, MYND READER insists on the power of the full album experience.
At its core, MYND READER is the convergence of decades of musicianship and hard-earned clarity. The band is led by Brian Sachs, a veteran of the ’90s jam-band scene and former drummer of the Bill Graham–managed NYC outfit The Authority, who once tore through rooms like Wetlands alongside Phish, Blues Traveler, and Dave Matthews Band. After the loss of legendary promoter Graham and the eventual dissolution of The Authority, Sachs never stopped creating. He simply went inward. That inward turn eventually reconnected him with longtime collaborator and Boulder musician Tonin, whose melodic instincts and genre-blurring production approach became the sonic framework for MYND READER.
The missing element arrived with vocalist and guitarist Shelby Kemp. His voice–part Southern rasp and part raw confession–hits before the brain can catch up, making each song land squarely in the chest. “When Shelby stepped in, suddenly the songs had a soul,” Sachs says. “The music stopped being conceptual and started breathing.” Live, the project expands into a five-piece with bassist Zach Jackson and keyboardist Chris Spies, translating the album’s layered arrangements into a high-energy, road-ready performance.
The concept album unfolds as a ten-track emotional arc, tracing a path from collapse to clarity. Rooted in spiritual reckoning, loss, and renewal, the album draws from Sachs’ own period of profound upheaval including grief, divorce, relocation, and reinvention. “These songs were born from a time when everything fell apart,” he explains. “I wanted the record to feel like a hand reaching out in the dark.” The result is a body of work that feels less like a collection of songs and more like a guided passage, moving from rupture to release and reorientation.
The tone is set immediately with the opening track, “Radio Warning” Anxious but warm and apocalyptic in a practical, not theatrical sense, the song hums with inevitability. Kemp delivers lines like “It’s been months since my skin felt sunlight” and “There ain’t no joy in living a lifetime alone” as if they surfaced unexpectedly at 2 a.m. Drums push forward without suffocating the groove, guitars smolder, and hope flickers stubbornly beneath the exhaustion.
At the center of the album stands the new radio single “Home,” a soaring, stadium-sized ode to belonging. Mixed by seven-time GRAMMY® Award–winning engineer Michael Brauer (The Rolling Stones, Coldplay, My Morning Jacket, John Mayer), the track captures the heart of classic rock and sets it ablaze with modern electricity. Thumping percussion and blues-tinted guitars weave around meandering keys, all supporting Kemp’s gospel-tinged vocal as he pleads, “Give me more life, please / More life.” The track is classy, intense, and emotionally unguarded.
“This one’s about the magnetic pull of that place you belong, whether it’s a person, a town, or a song,” Kemp says. “For us, it’s rock and roll. It’s home.” The band has gained early radio traction with the single, earning spins on more than 20 iHeartRadio stations. The accompanying music video, shot in and around Boulder, Colorado, expands on that theme through a nostalgic, cinematic lens, following a young dreamer chasing a rock-and-roll calling amid mountain backdrops and time-capsule interiors.
Elsewhere, “Simply Avanti” turns inward, meditating on time, change, and the constant hum of information. Its mantra, “In time we are free, free to be who we are,” lands like quiet self-talk, a grounding ritual amid the noise. “Leaving Our Lives” and “Falling Down” carry emotional weight without melodrama, while “Oslo” feels like driving through a city you’ve never visited but somehow recognize. “Mourning Light,” which is a Top 100 on the Mediabase Triple A charts, inhabits the space between grief and acceptance, letting silence do as much work as sound. Even the self-titled track mirrors the band itself: messy, thoughtful, and deeply human.
Brauer’s unmistakable analog warmth shapes the album’s cinematic depth. “He doesn’t mix safe,” Sachs notes. “He pushes things out of balance to tell the emotional truth. The quiet moments are quieter, and the explosions really explode.” The result is a record built on vulnerability and fire, balancing restraint with release.
With hundreds of thousands of streams and a growing slate of television and radio appearances both in Colorado and beyond, MYND READER has steadily built anticipation and momentum. This week and next, the band will be featured on Denver’s KBCO-FM (97.3), Fort Collins’ KRFC-FM (88.9), NBC’s 9News Denver (KUSA-TV), FOX31 Denver (KDVR-TV), and FOX21 Colorado Springs (KXRM-TV), alongside coverage from national and international outlets including Hollywood Magazine, Paste, SPIN, and Rolling Stone UK. Yet reinvention is not the band’s aim. Their ambition is more enduring: to remind listeners why rock still matters when it is honest, collaborative, and unafraid of emotional depth. For fans, the new album offers a soundtrack for long drives, late nights, and moments of quiet recalibration, driven not by algorithms but by instinct, connection, and the unmistakable feeling of something real and alive.
That rise is now fully realized with the album’s release. Get the new album digitally and vinyl at www.MyndReaderMusic.com, as well as on all major streaming platforms. The band’s album release show at Paradise Found Records & Music in Boulder tonight has officially sold out, with a waitlist available through the band’s website. Denver and Front Range audiences can catch MYND READER live next on March 7 at Cervantes’ Other Side.