These songs were not intended for a record release. There was no shiny wrapper in their future. They were created as far away from the music machine as possible, even as their journey started under cover of headphones, in a van, in the middle of a long year of touring a different project. These songs began with a resolution.
The idea was just to dabble in invention again, unencumbered by what the music should or shouldn’t be, and to see what forms would take shape. “I was feeling stifled by living as this caricature of a songwriter who seemed to have many similarities to me, but was lacking the actual nuance of being a human. I wanted to ignore that guy for a while and figure out what else was inside, and so I spent countless hours with headphones, in the dark, lit by a screen, staying up later than everyone. It took me three years to figure out what I was supposed to be doing, working piecemeal in only the stolen moments of my increasingly busy, scattered days. Coming home and having this music consume me became a way to escape the guts of my daily life.”
You can hear the frequent rides to and from town in these songs, the hours aimlessly spent listening to bizarre pop radio transmissions. Tuskha points to a similar hopelessness, not as a means to an end, but more as a means to finding the antidote to the end. This is a beat driven album without the anonymity. A songwriter’s album without sobriety. A ten song battle of character. This is a survivor album for everyone who is currently surviving.
Back in the clearcut behind the studio, you can hear Gillian Welch playing from the stereo, embellishing the space of the newly barren hillside . “There are no archetypes for music anymore. I feel like I’m on the dark side of my own private moon out here. Few people to share the landscape with. Here, I transcribe the world’s nonsense back into my own language. I might have thought I was writing the next Beyonce song. It might have been a Sun Ra tune I was channeling. Whatever works. We all drink from the same well. We all wrestle with the hours in the day. We are all collecting and arranging as we go, trying to live completely.”
You can hear these songs in their immediacy and you can leave them there, but you can also dig around in the dirt of each one. That is where you will find the soul and the spirit.
— Phil Moore, Siler City, 2016
Upcoming Dates
07.07 - Albuquerque, NM – Low Spirits*
07.08 – Denver, CO – Bluebird*
07.09 – Salt Lake City, UT – Urban Lounge*
07.10 – Boise, ID – The Olympic*
07.11 – Spokane, WA – The Bartlett*
07.12 – Seattle, WA – Neumos*
07.13 – Portland, OR – Doug Fir Lounge*
07.15 – San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall*
07.16 – Los Angeles, CA – Teragram*
07.17 – San Diego, CA – Irenic*
07.18 – Phoenix, AZ – Crescent Ballroom*
07.29 – Norman, OK – The Opolis*
07.30 – Kansas City, MO – Record Bar*
07.31 – Minneapolis, MN – Fine Line Music Café*
08.02 – Milwaukee, WI – Turner Hall*
08.03 – Chicago, IL – Thalia Hall*
08.04 – Detroit, MI – Loving Touch*
08.05 – Toronto, ON – Lee’s Palace*
08.06 – Pittsburgh, PA – Club Café*
08.07 – Cincinnati, OH – Southgate Revival*
08.12-13 – Eau Claire, WI - Eaux Claires Music Festival
09.08-10 – Raleigh, NC - Hopscotch Music Festival
* w/ Wye Oak
