News of a Nels Andrews single is always worth getting excited over. We described his music as combining “deft storytelling with a warmth of tone and gentleness of pace… Like finding a seashell at the back of a dusty cupboard, putting it to your ear and hearing the ocean.” It is in fact the ocean in Santa Cruz, California that Nels Andrews now calls home, a place that surely inspires him and forms the perfect back-drop for contemplation. Its draw could be felt on his 2013 release ‘Scrimshaw’ during the making of which he told us how he became “obsessed with cetaceans, casually starting at the Natural History Museum, with its giant blue whale hanging from the ceiling, moving on to Moby Dick, then to reading captains’ memoirs from the era, and finally going on actual whale watching trips.”
With Memory Compass, that contemplation continues as he scribes thoughts into song. Of Memory Compass he tells us “What if everyone you meet is a branch to another possible future? This is about retracing all your old relationships and wondering what might have been.”
The song was written with Emmanuel Paquette, a flamenco guitarist from the Azores (an archipelago located between Portugal and Morocco), who brings his hypnotic nylon string guitar to the recording as well.
Be sure to catch him on his upcoming UK tour starting in September. He’ll be touring with the wonderful Jess Morgan, what a great combination. Details below.
Memory Compass is taken from his forthcoming LP Pigeon & The Crow (out on August 9) which centre on the idea of life’s “mid-game”–it’s a vague area, a place just past innocence and before wisdom, when you know who you are, but maybe not what you want. These are songs about that perspective: an actress mid-career, a husband folding his now thin wedding sheets, a father meditating on his own love and selfishness, and the ghosts of former relationships returning to haunt us.
Some people’s stories are always worth retelling, like the song above, they show you part of that memory compass, the bonfire’s embers, the path travelled…Although he was born by the sea, it wasn’t until he moved to the desert that Nels Andrews began writing songs. He sang them alone in a house constructed of mud and tires on the sage-brushed mesas of Taos, New Mexico where he spent his 20’s, airing them occasionally around campfires. It wasn’t until a move 90 miles south to the dusty yet curiously eccentric city of Albuquerque that he began to play them in front of strangers, and from there, to start collaborating. Andrews enlisted the talents of some inventive indie musicians he met at the Red Door, a creaky second-floor respite and practice space (and former railroad brothel) on historic Route 66 in the centre of downtown. That initial collaboration began to shape his desert-infused folk/rock sound, pairing literary narratives of curious high desert outsiders with the psych-rock palate and electro-fuzz of his then band, The El Paso Eyepatch, and resulted in his debut album Sunday Shoes.
After his band dissolved, Andrews and his new wife moved back to her native east coast to set up a home in the freshly-blossoming bohemian enclave of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. There he crossed paths with bass virtuoso/composer Todd Sickafoose (Andrew Bird, Ani DiFranco, Anaïs Mitchell) who offered to produce Andrews’ sophomore record, Off Track Betting (Reveal Records UK/Lucky dice NL). Sickafoose brought with him a whole new palette of musicians from NYC’s downtown experimental/new music scene, which lent new textures and shapes to Andrews’ increasingly impressionistic story songs. Third album Scrimshaw was gleaned from his time working as a chauffeur in Manhattan; he followed his literary heroes Melville and Yeats, as the songs drew on an earthy mysticism and a romantic look to the past.
Now, happily stationed near the sea again in Santa Cruz, Andrews has gracefully woven the morning fog, redwoods, and oceanside into his forthcoming record Pigeon and The Crow, produced by traditional Irish flautist Nuala Kennedy (Gerry O’Conner, Will Oldham). A songwriter’s record in the spirit of Van Morrison’s Veedon Fleece with a breath of the texture, rhythm, and longing of Milton Nascimento’s Club De Esquina 1, Pigeon and The Crow brims with literary wordplay, mixed with some sway, some shimmer, and some sand between your toes.
The soon-to-be-released fourth studio record was tracked live over three days at Whispering Pines Studio in Los Angeles. The studio was originally built for Sam Cooke in the 60s, turned into a funk/soul palace in the 70s, abandoned when the owner found religion in the 80s, and later rehabilitated by Indie rock outfit Lord Huron. While recording, Andrews slept on the tracking room floor every night and dreamt in technicolour born of the vibes steeped into that well-worn musical space.
Andrews, along with Kennedy, Sebastian Steinberg (Iron and Wine, Fiona Apple, Soul Coughing) on bass, and Quinn on drums/percussion (T-Bone Burnett, Eastmountainsouth), breathed life into the songs together in that one room—and then the international collaboration began. Producer Kennedy headed back to Ireland with the tracks in tow, and beamed them across the globe to the rest of the players—from the UK to the Azores. The album boasts a mix of traditional players from Kennedy’s past to some of Andrews’ newest old friends like Stelth Ulvang of The Lumineers, as well as some older old friends and collaborators from New York, including guest appearances by fellow songsmiths Anaïs Mitchell, AJ Roach, and Anthony Da Costa.
The result is 10 ethereal yet substantial tracks that assess life “mid-game,” a time that is less straightforward than youth imagined, where our strategies and gambits are yet unresolved—stories from a place past innocence but perhaps still before wisdom. These are songs written about that place: an actress in her sunset, a husband folding now-soft wedding sheets, a father meditating on love and selfishness, and the ghosts of former relationships. Pigeon and The Crow contains wistful resolve, a steady backbone, and a late afternoon light reflected off the sea.
UK touring schedule w/ Jess Morgan
25 Sept – Bedford | Rogan’s Books
26 Sept – Norwich | Norwich Arts Center
28 Sept – Shrewsbury | The Hive
29 Sept – London | Slaughtered Lamb
30 Sept – Sheffield | Cafe #9
02 Oct – Hebden Bridge | Trades Club
04 Oct – Abington | Wee Gig
05 Oct – Glasgow | Glad Cafe*
10 Oct Orkney | The Sound Archive
12 Oct Loch Tay | The Big Shed
15 Oct Edinburgh | The Brig Below
18 Oct Coventry | Big Comfy Bookshop
*matinee performance