Stranger Again

Stranger Again is a dive into the realm of cosmic country; and songs like Radioman certainly send the listener to what feels like astral heights. Throughout the journey, Arnez’s Telecaster and Whit Wright’s pedal steel blow the ceiling off a tune, revealing the galaxy of stars above. On some of the records’ mellower moments, such as the spaciously produced I Can’t Touch You, a dim sense of vastness is palpable. Even as the album lifts itself up and out of the atmosphere, the rock of Stewart and Arnez’s voices keep things grounded and relatable. The record finds them mincing no words when singing about the all-too-Earth-bound complexities of relationships, manipulation, sacrifice, estrangement, and jealousy. Songs like Stranger Again and Come Clean remind the listener that you can only float around in vacuous bliss for so long before life’s gravity reels you in and forces you to confront the truth. 

Stranger Again

Video filmed, directed, and edited by Gabe Anderson with puppetry by Alan Best.

Talkhouse “On the road, we develop strength and confidence to bring familiarity to strange, new experiences. In our case, we do this as the closest of friends. Maybe an hour goes by, and we hardly notice. I guess what we’re getting at is, you don’t have to try very hard to bring new energy into your life when it’s built into your way of making a living together…” See full essay

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Rebel

American Songwriter “With their brand new song ‘Rebel’ the group funnels such an emotional, personal development right into the songwriting… With the bridge, there emerges an almost psychedelic turn with the vocals, a counterpart sung between Arnez and Skylar Gudasz… The arrangements and dusty musicality feel rootsier and more driving, signaling they are only getting started.” See full feature and interview with Marnio Arnez

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Come Clean

With Come Clean, Stewart retroactively lifts the veil on a relationship founded on deceit and manipulation. Her voice, while plaintive and mournful, delivers the confidence of a singer in command of both her craft and her future. Read More

In Their Own Words

“Much of this album was written during an intensive week-long artist residency at Wildacres Retreat, in the North Carolina mountains. Between late night musings of our mutual nostalgia for video rental stores and hours spent waiting by the radio for our favorite songs to be played, once signs of our youth now-turned relics of the past. Between the stillness of cicada song bleeding through the walls of the hundred year old cabin we called home that week in August and the rise and fall of the shape note singers, reverberating over the Blue Ridge in perfect harmony with that magical place. The rest came in spurts at home when we were able to make the stillness and find the songs we had been carrying.

We weren’t in much of a hurry to record these songs as we were to get to know them, to flesh out the simple skeletons we had assembled. Throughout the course of touring and playing these songs live with our band, they came to life, and we knew we had found the people who needed to make this record with us: our bass player and co-producer, Alex Bingham (Hiss Golden Messenger); our drummer and creative collaborator, Gabe Anderson (Sleepy Cat Records); and Nashville-based pedal steel player Whit Wright (Joshua Hedley, Elizabeth Cook) who joined us for the eight day session at Bedtown Studios, Bingham’s lakehouse-turned recording studio in Roanoke, VA.

A theme of relationships and their perpetual states of change runs throughout the album. Relationships shape who we are. We long to connect with others, and the relationships we have with each other, with ourselves, with culture...they all inform the ways we move through the world.” - Blue Cactus

Credits

Performance

• Mario Arnez - Vocals, electric guitars, acoustic guitar

• Steph Stewart - Vocals, acoustic guitar

• Alex Bingham - Bass, Mellotron, synthesizer, percussion

• Gabe Anderson - Drums

• Joe MacPhail - Hammond Organ, Wurlitzer

• Whit Wright - Pedal Steel

• Skylar Gudasz - Vocals

• Heather McEntire - Vocals

• Saman Khoujinian - OP-1

• Daniel Faust - Percussion

Production

• Written by Steph Stewart & Mario Arnez

• Produced by Alex Bingham & Blue Cactus

• Recorded at Bedtown Studios 

• Engineered by Ryan Johnson & Saman Khoujinian

• Mixed by Ryan Johnson, Silkworm Sound

• Mastered by Greg Abate, Neon Audio

• Cover Art Design by Gabe Anderson

• Photos by Chris Frisina

• Vinyl & CD Package Design by Gabe Anderson

Lyrics

available release day

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