With daring delight and measureless appreciation, I report to you the coming of our new record TRANSPARENT TOWNS, out via Well Kept Secret on September 19. Here is the first song, “Last Chance,” accompanied by a self-shot video documenting the tape melting on an incandescent Oklahoma summer from a hilltop in Tulsa.
In regard to the album, my grandmother Shirley had a saying that cemented itself in the ceiling of my childhood: If you collect memories throughout your life, as you age they turn to gold. As if the alchemy of remembering transmutes the very framework of who we are into a precious resource. I couldn’t help but wonder how these memories change with us in transit from the beginning of the journey to its grand terminus, wherever that may be. Can we rely on how we remember people, places, experiences, and our emotions? How are they transformed by progress, loss, and the ideals we wrap around these invisible monuments of time? Transparent towns and a series of roadside attractions, once gilded and glittering, now rusted and ransacked by wistfulness and the weather, behind the locked gate of days past.
Is the question what is truer? Does it matter, if even the act of remembering is us making more gold? The perfect storm of nostalgia shows no sign of letting up.
The album was performed by Megan Palmer, Kyle Reid, Andrew Perusi, and Alberto Roubert, with additional voices by Lydia Loveless and John Moreland. Engineered and mixed by Michael Trepagnier and mastered by Carl Saff. Album photo and layout by Rebecca Sarkar. Press photo by Amber Watson.
Transparent Towns is available for pre-order now in the store on this very site, and anyone who pre-orders a physical copy will be entered into a drawing for a limited-edition vinyl test pressing of the album.
As always, thanks for listening.
John
