Hiss Golden Messenger Announce New Album With Bon Iver, Megafaun Members

Hiss Golden Messenger have announced their first new LP since 2014’s Lateness of Dancers. It’s called Heart Like a Levee, and it’s out October 7 via Merge. Frontman M.C. Taylor produced the album with Bradley Cook (of Megafaun). It was recorded in Durham, North Carolina with Bradley Cook on bass, Phil Cook (also of Megafaun) on piano, Matt McCaughan (of Bon Iver) on drums, Tift Merritt and Alexandra Sauser-Monnig (of Mountain Man) on backing vocals, and Matt Douglas and Michael Lewis on horns. (The Cooks, McCaughan, and Sauser-Monnig all contributed to Lateness of Dancers.) Listen to the album’s opening track “Biloxi” below.

The deluxe version of Heart Like a Levee comes with a bonus album, Vestapol–“an intimate collection of eight previously unreleased songs.” Taylor wrote the songs during the same time frame as Heart Like a Levee and recorded them in motels and at his Durham home. Check out both albums’ respective tracklistings and artwork below. Also below, find Taylor’s statement about the record.

Check out our Guest List interview with M.C. Taylor.

The writing of the songs that became Heart Like a Levee started in a hotel room in Washington DC in January of 2015 during a powerful storm that darkened the East Coast. At that time I was feeling—more acutely than I had ever felt before—wrenched apart by my responsibilities to my family and to my music. Forgetting, momentarily, that for me, each exists only with the other. How could I forget? Though maybe my lapse was reasonable: I had just quit my job, the most recent and last, in a series of dead-end gigs stretching back 20 years, with the vow that my children would understand their father as a man in love with his world and the inventor of his own days. They would be rare in that regard. And then—driven by monthly bills and pure fear— I left for another tour, carrying a load of guilt that I could just barely lift. But in that snowy hotel room I found the refrain that became my compass: I was a dreamer, babe, when I set out on the road; but did I say I could find my way home?

Heart Like a Levee:

01 Biloxi
02 Tell Her I’m Just Dancing
03 Heart Like a Levee
04 Like a Mirror Loves a Hammer
05 Smoky’s Song
06 Cracked Windshield
07 As the Crow Flies
08 Happy Day (Sister My Sister)
09 Say It Like You Mean It
10 Ace of Cups Hung Low Band
11 Highland Grace

Vestapol:

01 Blackeyed Boy
02 After the Colors
03 Together’s Just a Word
04 Living Above the Waterline
05 Strawberry Girl Reel
06 Little Rain
07 John the Gun
08 Vestapol (Is Where I’m Bound)

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