New(ish) Single Out March 12th!

It all started back in 2004 when our housemate used a fork to pry seafood from dry ice. Who knew such crazy sounds would occur when dry ice meets stainless steel? We messed around with this minor miracle for as long as the ice lasted, recording our “improvisations” onto minidisc, and a little while later I assembled the samples into a beat. This matched the tempo of a kind of spikily melancholic song I’d been working on called “Half Life.”

I’m not sure I completely endorse the fundamental cynicism of this song two decades later, but the dread entombed in these images and melodies still haunts me such that I felt it deserved a second thrashing. A song about the impossibility of ever truly outrunning the past, to be listened to at dusk.  

Overdubbing woodwinds for the new album!

“The Studio” in Ireland is much simpler than our barn setup in Vermont, but it works. The winter farm on the wall is there to remind us of home, which also happens to be under two feet of snow at present.

The new album will feature all new music written for the Vermont band no earlier than 2020 (I have to say that, because it seems we’re always releasing stuff that’s been gestating for 10 or 20 years—well, not this time!)

We’re done a lot of woodshedding on this music as a group—Damon, Emily, Kate, Victor and Ben—and I think you’ll hear that lived-in, live emphasis in the recordings, which highlight the interplay of the core band instruments over excessive overdubs and production. Felt like coming home.

It’s too soon to say when this album will be ready (likely 2027), but we’ll have some other tidbits to share in the meantime. More on that shortly! 

–Damon