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Joanna Brouk

Sounds Of The Sea

    Joanna Brouk’s most ambitious recording, Sounds of the Sea is a concept album full of mystery and eroticism. A conch shell bookends this journey into the deep, going down and down and down further, never reaching bottom. Drawing inspiration from various legends of mermaids and sailors, Brouk weaves circling flutes, vocals, drones and whale songs to describe a sense of unfathomable longing more clearly than words could ever express. Sounds of the Sea is a hypnotic and profound achievement by one of new age’s greatest composers.

    TRACK LISTING

    SIDE A - Atravesta
    1. Invocation
    2. Atavesta
    3. Playing In The Water
    4. Aurora
    5. Diving Deeper, Remembering Love
    6. Going To Sleep

    SIDE B - The Sailor And The Nymph
    1. The Reminder Of Long Ago
    2. The Nymph Rising
    3. Calling The Sailor
    4. First Meeting
    5. Touching The Sky
    6. The Sounding
    7. Return To The Deep

    Slowdive

    Everything Is Alive - Piccadilly Records AOTY Edition

      THE PICCADILLY RECORDS ALBUM OF THE YEAR 2023.

      Everything Is Alive, Slowdive’s 5th record, is exactly what the title suggests: an exploration into the shimmering nature of life and the universal touch points within it.

      While there are parts of this record that could sit neatly next to the atmospheric quality of 1995’s Pygmalion; everything is alive also manages to break down the boundaries of what’s come before it. Spanning psychedelic soundscapes, pulsating 80’s electronic elements and John Cale inspired journeys, the album lands immediately as something made for 2023 and beyond.

      For a genre that is often thought of as divisive, and often warrants introspection, here Slowdive show their craft as the masters of it by pushing it outwards, beyond the singular; the end result being a record which feels as emotional and cathartic as it is hopeful.

      STAFF COMMENTS

      Liam says: When Slowdive returned in 2014, there was a real sense of jubilation and satisfaction that the shoegaze legends were finally getting their well deserved dues and plaudits. However in the years following their return, the world's landscape changed significantly. Not just on a global scale, but also on a personal level for members of the band. 'everything is alive' was born during a heavy period of grief, which can be felt on the closer “The Slab” - a visceral and overwhelming wall of sound that you just want to crawl into for solace and to escape the troubles of the world.
      Despite these moments of sadness, there is real artistry in the way Slowdive manages to reflect on the human experience and how we navigate it throughout our lives. This in turn results in an absolute marvel of a record, with some of Slowdive's best work to date. Opener “Shanty” is an all-consuming shoegaze epic of colossal proportions, whilst the gorgeous “Prayer Remembered” is an atmospheric slice of ambient perfection that harks back to Slowdive's 1990 debut EP. The dreamy ”Alife” swirls amongst Rachel Goswell's ethereal vocals, which is then followed by the stripped back and vulnerable delivery of Neil Halstead on the exquisite and delicate “Andalucia Plays”. Then there's “Kisses”, the album's most 'pop' moment but also one of its best. Finally, we have the woozy headiness of “Skin In The Game” and the synth led and almost post-rock “Chained To A Cloud”, both of which just further emphasise the greatness of 'everything is alive'.
      With 'everything is alive', Slowdive are well and truly full of life. Whilst their 2017 self-titled felt like a celebration of their legacy, the poignancy and beauty of 'everything is alive' feels like Slowdive never left and we hope they stay with us forever.

      TRACK LISTING

      1. Shanty
      2. Prayer Remembered
      3. Alife
      4. Andalucia Plays
      5. Kisses
      6. Skin In The Game
      7. Chained To A Cloud
      8.. The Slab

      Drop Nineteens

      Hard Light

        Following the release of the shoegaze masterpiece Delaware in 1992, and the intricate experimentations on National Coma in 1993, Drop Nineteens disbanded. They had a great run. Shared stages with Radiohead, Hole, Blur, PJ Harvey. Went from being teenaged kids in Boston to mid twenty somethings with an MTV video under their belt. So when Drop Nineteens ceased to be, Greg Ackell felt content, music was a closed chapter.

        That was until 2021. For the first time in nearly 30 years, Ackell felt compelled to pick up a guitar. He immediately called up Steve Zimmeran, the band’s bassist and fellow guitarist, and the two got writing. It felt effortless for Ackell, like he never stopped writing music. “We were off to the races,” he says. “But also the question came up: what does a Drop Nineteens song sound like today? Enter Hard Light, the band’s stunning third record. It’s the band’s proverbial follow up to Delaware, a modern Drop Nineteens record that is completely singular in its sound and vision.

        The first task making Hard Light, was of course, getting the rest of the band back together. Drop Nineteens is an inherently collaborative project. Ackell’s primarily the lyrics writer, and he collaborates with Zimmerman, Paula Kelley, Motohiro Yasue, and Peter Koeplin to create the sonic world. The record came together over the course of a year, recording at a patchwork of studios all around the country. Making music together felt natural, fluid, exciting.

        The guitar reverb is expansive as ever. Ackell and Kelley’s vocals are crystalline. “Scapa Flow,” is triumphant. An excellent example of what a modern day Drop Nineteens song sounds like. The guitars glide like clouds on a blue sky day, drums shuffle in the background, searching. Ackell and Kelley’s vocals are cool toned and dreamy, bound up in a haze of reverb. It’s unquestionably lovely. You could say the same for the whole of the record. Hard Light is so lovely. A portrait of a band 30 years later, as talented and as dedicated to their craft as ever.

        STAFF COMMENTS

        Barry says: It's been THIRTY YEARS since Boston's Drop Nineteens put out an album, and we've finally been gifted with another outing. While 'Hard Light' clearly trades in the sort of woozy heft and wall-of-sound intensity we've come to know from the 90's shoegaze, it's got a more nuanced melodic edge, shining through the fog when you least expect.

        TRACK LISTING

        1.Hard Light
        2.Scapa Flow
        3.Gal
        4.Tarantula
        5.The Price Was High
        6.Rose With Smoke
        7.A Hitch
        8.Lookout
        9.Another One Another
        10.Policeman Getting Lost
        11.T

        Various Artists

        V4 Visions: Of Love & Androids - National Album Day 2023 Edition

          In the midst of the UK house rave-olution of the early-’90s, London’s V4 Visions imprint documented the confluence of street soul, deep house, swingbeat, and jungle sounds emanating from the clubs and pirate radio signals. Over the course of half a decade, V4’s unparalleled 12” output referenced every significant Black British music scene; from lovers rock to jazz-funk, sound system reggae to hip hop, new jack swing to garage, from artists Ashaye, Julie Stapleton, Maureen Mason, Rohan Delano, The Wades, and Endangered Species. This 18-track double LP is the first critical overview of the label, with extensive notes by Simon Reynolds, era-defining photographs, and fresh remasters, all housed in a glorious foil-stamped gatefold tip-on sleeve. Is this a dream?

          TRACK LISTING

          1. Maureen Mason I'm Believing (In Love Again)
          2. Ashaye What's This World Coming To
          3. Julie Stapleton Just Dreaming
          4. Ashaye Dreaming (Original Mix)
          5. Julie Stapleton (Feat. Ashaye) All The Way (Guitar Mix)
          6. Maureen Mason If This Is A Dream
          7. The Wades Get Off That (Poison)
          8. Ashaye Come Go With Me
          9. Julie Stapleton Where's Your Love Gone (Remix)
          10. Rohan Delano The Way I Love You
          11. Ashaye Dreaming (Jungle Mix)
          12. Endangered Species Just A Memory (Vocal Mix)
          13. Endangered Species Endangered Species
          14. Insight (Feat. Ashaye) Fantasy (Insight Mix)
          15. Ashaye Nowhere To Run (Instrumental South Side Mix)
          16. Insight Paradise (Para Dub)
          17. Jungle Biznizz Joy In The Jungle
          18. Rohan Delano Inflight

          Duster

          Stratosphere - National Album Day 2023 Edition

            Best listened to from inside the womb, Duster’s 1998’s debut Stratosphere simultaneously capped off and reinvented the slow core’s first wave. A four track dreamscape that will wake the neighbors and then lull them back to sleep. Hazy, arpeggiated guitars layer over a deliberate drummer with no real place to be, as semi-inaudible vocals warn of millennial malaise and subtly encourage the listener to “rock out, rock out, rock out, rock out.”

            TRACK LISTING

            SIDE A
            1 Moon Age
            2 Heading For The Door
            3 Gold Dust
            4 Topical Solution
            5 Docking The Pod
            6 The Landing
            7 Constellations
            8 The Queen Of Hearts
            SIDE B
            9 Two Way Radio
            10 Inside Out
            11 Stratosphere
            12 Reed To Hillsborough
            13 Shadows Of Planes
            14 Earth Moon Transit
            15 The Twins/Romantica
            16 Sideria

            Slowdive

            Everything Is Alive

              Everything Is Alive, Slowdive’s 5th record, is exactly what the title suggests: an exploration into the shimmering nature of life and the universal touch points within it.

              While there are parts of this record that could sit neatly next to the atmospheric quality of 1995’s Pygmalion; everything is alive also manages to break down the boundaries of what’s come before it. Spanning psychedelic soundscapes, pulsating 80’s electronic elements and John Cale inspired journeys, the album lands immediately as something made for 2023 and beyond.

              For a genre that is often thought of as divisive, and often warrants introspection, here Slowdive show their craft as the masters of it by pushing it outwards, beyond the singular; the end result being a record which feels as emotional and cathartic as it is hopeful.


              STAFF COMMENTS

              Andy says: Hallelujah! The Kings and Queens of Shoegaze return with a beautiful record which feels like everything you'd want from a new Slowdive LP. It ticks all the boxes. Everything they've done rolled into one blissed-out dream. It's brilliant!

              TRACK LISTING

              SIDE A:
              1. Shanty
              2. Prayer Remembered
              3. Alife
              4. Andalucia Plays
              SIDE B:
              5. Kisses
              6. Skin In The Game
              7. Chained To A Cloud
              8.. The Slab

              Various Artists

              Eccentric Northern Soul

                Northern soul floor fillers of the Eccentric variety. Compiling 17 handpicked gems from across the Numeroverse, this album keeps the faith for both newcomers and veterans alike. Soaring vocals, driving beats, and syrupy strings... expect a blend of classic Motown-inspired sounds with a unique British flair that is sure to get your feet moving. The only northern soul record you’ll ever need. 

                TRACK LISTING

                1. Out Of Sights - Tears Don’t Care
                2. The Sequins - He’s A Flirt
                3. Helene Smith - Thrills And Chills
                4. Morris Chestnut - Too Darn Soulful
                5. The Sensations - Demanding Man
                6. The Extremes - How I Need Your Love
                7. Ed Crook - That’s Alright
                8. Carl Henderson - That Girl
                9. Bob & Fred - I’ll Be On My Way
                10. Elvin Spencer - Lift This Hurt
                11. Syl Johnson - One Way Ticket To Nowhere
                12. Eula Cooper - Standing By Love
                13. Barbara Stant - My Mind HoldsOn To Yesterday
                14. Ty Karim - Lighten Up Baby
                15. Stormy - I Won’t Stop To Cry
                16. Royal Jesters - Use Your Head
                17. Otis Brown - I’m Ready For Love

                Eiafuawn

                Birds In The Ground

                  While Duster went into hibernation in the year 2000, Clay Parton’s four-track never stopped rolling. Recorded alone at home over several years, Birds In The Ground is an album of 30-something, post-9/11 malaise. Under his Eiafuawn (Everything Is All Fucked Up And What Not) acronym, Parton hides beneath layers of fuzzy and clean guitars, his hesitant, cottony vocal disappear into noise. 

                  TRACK LISTING

                  Side A
                  1. Bunny
                  2. No More Like That
                  3. Birds
                  4. The Voice Of Music
                  5. Bees
                  6. The Coffin Was So Light I Thought It Might Float Away

                  Side B
                  7. Good God Y’all
                  8. Secret Gypsy Language
                  9. On A Peoplemover
                  10. Two Thousand Twelve
                  11. The Drunk Pilot And The Romantic Passenger
                  12. Modulator Hustle

                  LNZNDRF

                  II - 2023 Repress

                    Now available repressed on red vinyl, LNZNDRF’s ‘II’ is a mass hypnotism, somehow both thunderous and trance-inducing. Recorded in extensive, shamanistic jam sessions at Austin’s Public Hi-Fi in September 2019 and later edited down to give it shape, these songs feel like Right Now, with some toes testing the waters of the future.

                    The brothers Scott and Bryan Devendorf (The National), Ben Lanz (The National, Beirut) and multi-instrumentalist Aaron Arntz (Beirut, Grizzly Bear) are in headlamps and spelunking gear, descending into a somnambulant space.

                    Album deep cut ‘Ringwoodite’, with its skittering, lithe and precise drums, is a summer sparkler of a song, whizzing by at such a clip it leaves you giddily following its traces. On its heels are the computer lover ‘Gaskiers’ and come-on-slow motorik anthem ‘Stowaway’ that, while not connected by sound, work in tandem to put LNZNDRF fully in the canon of strange and indelible krautrock.

                    Its incantations seem to beckon the dystopia of present day as much as they beckon the Big Mystery awaiting us when we finally bust through its barrier. It won’t be a utopia but it will at least be something different. As it goes on the lysergic postpunk standout ‘You Still Rip’: “We’ll live like fruitless trees towards endless breeze linked as we please, the burning bridges smolder in our wake.”

                    TRACK LISTING

                    1. The Xeric Steppe
                    2. Brace Yourself
                    3. You Still Rip
                    4. Cascade
                    5. Chicxulub
                    6. Ringwoodite
                    7. Gaskiers
                    8. Stowaway

                    Duster

                    Moods, Modes

                      Explore the Duster universe on the far superior 45RPM format. This deluxe triple 7” box contains Duster’s first single—1997’s Transmission Flux (including “Stars Will Fall” & “Orbitron”), 1998’s Apex, Trance[1]Like (featuring “Four Hours”), plus Stratosphere’s painfully absent “Echo, Bravo” and the lost 2002 outtake “What You’re Doing To Me.” Housed in replica sleeves and placed in a sturdy two-piece box, Moods, Modes also contains a Duster-branded hanky for those who like to accessorize.

                      TRACK LISTING

                      Disc 1: Transmission, Flux
                      Side A


                      1 Orbitron
                      2 Fuzz And Timbre
                      3 My Friends Are Cosmonauts

                      Side B

                      4 Closer To The Speed Of Sound
                      5 Stars Will Fall

                      Disc 2: Apex, Trance-Like
                      Side A

                      6 Light Years

                      Side B

                      7 Four Hours

                      Disc 3: Echo, Bravo
                      Side A

                      8 Echo, Bravo

                      Side B

                      9 What You’re Doing To Me

                      Chisel

                      Set You Free - 2023 Reissue

                        In late 1996, after two years of persistent touring, Chisel was eager to document its quickly evolving sound. Decamping from their native D.C. to Brooklyn’s Rare Book Room, the power trio of Ted Leo, Chris Norborg, and John Dugan teamed with engineer Nicolas Vernhes and came away with Set You Free, a remarkable, but largely overlooked, classic of the era. Originally issued on the venerable Gern Blandsten imprint in April 1997, Set You Free presaged the turn of the century 60s rock revival, providing a counterpoint to second-wave emo. This deluxe 25th anniversary edition has remastered and expanded the original’s 17-song track list with five period alternates and rarities, plus a booklet of lyrics, photos, and an essay by Jes Skolnik. Get ready for the invasion.

                        TRACK LISTING

                        SIDE A
                        1 On Warmer Music
                        2 All My Kin
                        3 It’s Alright, You’re O.K.
                        4 The Mutable Mercury
                        5 The Town Crusher
                        6 The Unthinkable Is True

                        SIDE B
                        7 River High
                        8 Every Is A Good Trip
                        9 Do Go On
                        10 Privileged & Impotent
                        11 Oh Dear Friends

                        SIDE C
                        12 An Amateur Thief
                        13 In Our Time
                        14 Morley Timmons
                        15 The O.T.S.
                        16 Rip Off The Gift
                        17 The Last Good Time

                        SIDE D
                        18 The Guns Of Meridian Hill
                        19 The Town Crusher (live)
                        20 Morley Timmons (early Version)
                        21 Every Is A Good Trip (extended)
                        22 The O.T.S. (early Version)

                        Porridge Radio

                        Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky

                        When Porridge Radio’s Dana Margolin, one of the most vital new voices in rock, began to consider the themes of her new album, three vivid words began to emerge: joy, fear and endlessness. The artwork of the band’s third full-length, Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky, is a surreal image that evokes the ducks and dives, slippery slopes and existential angst of life in recent times. “To me, the feelings of joy, fear and endlesses coexist together,” says Dana. “You’re never just happy or unhappy.”

                        Following Every Bad’s release in 2020, Margolin was quickly becoming regarded as one of the most magnetic band leaders around. But if Every Bad established Dana’s bravery in laying herself bare, her band’s third record takes that to anthemic new heights. While there are moments of guttural release, she also finds soft power on songs. “I used to think I had to be loud to be heard,” she admits, “but now I’m definitely less afraid of being gentle.” The band’s first new single, ‘Back To The Radio’, sets out their stall, a lurching call to arms that contrasts Dana’s lyrics of panic and closing herself off. This song is just one of example in WDBLTTS that explores something that has long been an important part of Porridge Radio’s process: playfulness. “I think the album needed to have that balance,” Dana explains.

                        Balance: that’s the word the album seems to be eternally striving for – joy, fear and endlessness in harmony but also self-acceptance. Dana is more aware of how she’s creating a persona as her star continues to rise, and how she’s singing personal songs that now belong to other people which gives her purpose. She says, “I wrote these songs for myself, but I think everyone wants to feel like what they’re doing is useful in some way. I’m ready to embrace it all now, whatever happens.”

                        STAFF COMMENTS

                        Barry says: There's a wonderful strength around the new Porridge Radio LP, it's bold and it's nuanced and anthemic but it's also defiant, with moments of instrumental and lyrical fragility perfectly offset by grand crescendos and almost post-rock levels of intensity. Beautifully written and melodic throughout, but with both moments of divine joy and passages of honest vulnerability.

                        TRACK LISTING

                        SIDE A:
                        1. Back To The Radio
                        2. Trying
                        3. Birthday Party
                        4. End Of Last Year
                        5. Rotten
                        6. U Can Be Happy If U Want To

                        SIDE B:
                        7. Flowers
                        8. Jealousy
                        9. I Hope She’s OK 2
                        10. Splintered
                        11. The Rip
                        12. Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky

                        Sufjan Stevens & Angelo De Augustine

                        A Beginner's Mind

                          A Beginner’s Mind began when the two musicians and Asthmatic Kitty labelmates decamped to a friend’s cabin in upstate New York for a monthlong songwriting sabbatical. Watching a movie to unwind after each day’s work, they soon found their songs reflecting the films and began investigating this connection in earnest.

                          The resulting album is 14 songs (loosely) based on (mostly) popular films—highbrow, lowbrow and everything in between. They wrote in tandem—one person writing a verse, the other a chorus, churning out chord progressions and lyrics willy-nilly, often finishing each other’s sentences in the process. Rigorous editing and rewriting ensued. The results are less a “cinematic exegesis” and more a “rambling philosophical inquiry” that allows the songs to free-associate at will. Plot-points, scene summaries, and leading characters are often displaced by esoteric interpolations that ask the bigger question: what does it mean to be human in a broken world?

                          Stevens and De Augustine wrote everything with a deliberate sense of shoshin—the Zen Buddhist concept for which the record is named and an idea that empowered the pair to look for and write about unlikely inspiration without preconceived notions of what a film had to say (The I-Ching and Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies also served as incentives along the way). The movies became rhetorical prompts, with the songwriters letting their distinct reactions and creative instincts govern their process. The underlying objective was empathy and openness, absent of judgment: to observe with the eyes of a child.

                          The album’s artwork comes courtesy of Ghanaian artist Daniel Anum Jasper. In Ghana during the late ’80s, a novel “mobile cinema” culture emerged when enterprising film fans screened Hollywood blockbusters in the backs of pick-up trucks using portable generators. To advertise the movies, artists painted alternate posters inspired only by the scant information they had about each film. Sufjan and Angelo commissioned a pioneer of this form—Jasper—to paint a series of new works for A Beginner’s Mind (including covers for three 7-inch singles). Information about the project was deliberately kept vague so that Mr. Jasper could work without restraint.

                          Sufjan Stevens is an artist, songwriter and composer living in New York. He has released nine widely lauded studio albums and a number of collaborations with fellow musicians, choreographers and visual artists from the New York City Ballet and the celebrated director Luca Guadagnino to his stepfather Lowell Brams and noted dancer Jalaiah Harmon.

                          Angelo De Augustine is an artist and songwriter living in Thousand Oaks, California—a suburb north of Los Angeles, where he grew up. He has released three albums including his self-released debut, Spirals of Silence (2014), and two for Asthmatic Kitty Records, Swim Inside The Moon (2017) and Tomb (2019).

                          STAFF COMMENTS

                          Darryl says: Beautifully combining the distinct voices and instrumental styles of both performers into an intoxicating juxtaposition of folk and tenderly plucked indie balladry. It's haunting in parts, and elsewhere wonderfully melodic, a perfect outing for both performers.

                          TRACK LISTING

                          1. Reach Out 3:43
                          2. Lady Macbeth In Chains 3:42
                          3. Back To Oz 4:25
                          4. The Pillar Of Souls 4:04
                          5. You Give Death A Bad Name 5:11
                          6. Beginner’s Mind 2:36
                          7. Olympus 3:07
                          8. Murder And Crime 3:43
                          9. (This Is) The Thing 3:13
                          10. It’s Your Own Body And Mind 2:27
                          11. Lost In The World 3:20
                          12. Fictional California 3:03
                          13. Cimmerian Shade 5:01
                          14. Lacrimae 2:05

                          Shame

                          Drunk Tank Pink

                            There are moments on Drunk Tank Pink where you almost have to reach for the sleeve to check this is the same band who made 2018’s Songs Of Praise. Such is the jump Shame have made from the riotous post-punk of their debut to the sprawling adventurism and twitching anxieties laid out here. The South Londoner’s blood and guts spirit, that wink and grin of devious charm, is still present, it’s just that it’s grown into something bigger, something deeper, more ambitious and unflinchingly honest.

                            The genius of Drunk Tank Pink is how these lyrical themes dovetail with the music. Opener Alphabet dissects the premise of performance over a siren call of nervous, jerking guitars, its chorus thrown out like a beer bottle across a mosh pit. Songs spin off and lurch into unexpected directions throughout here, be it March Day’s escalating aural panic attack or the shapeshifting darkness of Snow Day. There’s a Berlin era Bowie beauty to the lovelorn Human For A Minute while closer Station Wagon weaves from a downbeat mooch into a souring, soullifting climax in which Steen elevates himself beyond the clouds and into the heavens. Or at least that’s what it sounds like.

                            From the womb to the clouds (sort of), Shame are currently very much in the pink.

                            STAFF COMMENTS

                            Barry says: As uncompromising and incendiary as ever, Shame's 'Drunk Tank Pink' takes all of the riotous guitars and pummeling percussion and twists them into a recognisable but refreshing take on their trademark sound. A lot more intricate, elaborate and nuanced, Shame go from strength to strength.

                            TRACK LISTING

                            SIDE A:
                            1. Alphabet
                            2. Nigel Hitter
                            3. Born In Luton
                            4. March Day
                            5. Water In The Well
                            6. Snow Day

                            SIDE B:
                            7. Human
                            8. Great Dog
                            9. 6/1
                            10. Harsh Degrees
                            11. Station Wagon

                            Bright Eyes

                            Down In The Weeds, Where The World Once Was

                            A lone pair of footsteps meanders down a street in omaha, into the neighborhood bar and then into a near-imperceptible tangle of conversations – about wars, sleepless nights – a surrealist din pushing against the sound of ragtime. Then, as the background quiets, a line rings out clearly: “i think about how much people need – what they need right now is to feel like there’s something to look forward to. We have to hold on. We have to hold on.”

                            Thus we enter the fitting, cacophonic introduction to bright eyes’ tenth studio album and first release since 2011. Down in the weeds, where the world once was is an enormous record caught in the profound in-between of grief and clarity – one arm wrestling its demons, the other gripping the hand of love, in spite of it.

                            The end of bright eyes’ unofficial hiatus came naturally. Conor oberst pitched the idea of getting the band back together during a 2017 christmas party at bright eyes bandmate nathaniel walcott’s los angeles home. The two huddled in the bathroom and called mike mogis, who was christmas shopping at an omaha mall. Mogis immediately said yes. There was no specific catalyst for the trio, aside from finding comfort amidst a decade of brutal change. Sure, why now? Is the question, but for a project whose friendship is at the core, it was simply why not?

                            The resulting bright eyes album came together unlike any other of its predecessors. Down in the weeds is bright eyes’ most collaborative, stemming from only one demo and written in stints in omaha and in bits and pieces in walcott’s los angeles home. Radically altering a writing process 25 years into a project seems daunting, but oberst said there was no trepidation: “our history and our friendship, and my trust level with them, is so complete and deep. And i wanted it to feel as much like a three-headed monster as possible.”

                            As a title, as a thesis, down in the weeds, where the world once was functions on a global, apocalyptic level of anxiety that looms throughout the record. But on a personal level, it speaks to rooting around in the dirt of one’s memories, trying to find the preciousness that’s overgrown and unrecognizable. For oberst, coming back to bright eyes was a bit of that. A symbol of simpler times, vaguely nostalgic. And even though it wasn’t actually possible to go back to the way things were, even though there wasn’t an easy happy ending, there was a new reality left to work with.

                            And here, there is a bleary-eyed hopefulness – earnest, emotive recommitments to love appear on “dance and sing” and “just once in the world.” And throughout, down in the weeds features snippets of oberst’s loved ones speaking, in late-night conversations. The fleeting loveliness of intimate moments punctuates the bleakness of the record’s existential crisis, crackling like lightning bugs illuminating the long night.

                            Down in the weeds is a distillation of a prolific, enduring canon. It’s immediate and urgent, the product of its creators’ growth across a decade apart, as well as the need to make a record together to find solace from loss. Through deliberate, fearless experimentation in process, the trio made the truest bright eyes sound: the sound of a deep bond, of a band coming home, but also a seamless continuation, like bright eyes never went away. It’s the impossible, sprawling mess of human experience that bright eyes has always sought to put to tape, since the beginning – the sound of holding on. Why now? Why not?

                            STAFF COMMENTS

                            Barry says: It's been far too long since the last Bright Eyes album, and this one shows why we've missed him so much. Beautifully tender melodies, orchestral swoon and soaring crescendos aplenty. This is a new journey for Oberst & crew, but also warmingly familiar.

                            TRACK LISTING

                            Pageturners Rag
                            Dance And Sing
                            Just Once In The World
                            Mariana Trench
                            One And Done
                            Pan And Broom
                            Stairwell Song
                            Persona Non Grata
                            Tilt-a-whirl
                            Hot Car In The Sun
                            Forced Convalescence
                            To Death’s Heart (in Three Parts)
                            Calais To Dover
                            Comet Song


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