Following his highly acclaimed 2021 Two Saviors album, Buck Meek‘s third album ‘Haunted House‘, and his first for his new label, 4AD, will be released on 25th August. His regular band is expanded with Ken Woodward (bass) and his brother, Dylan Meek, who joined them for the session on piano and synths.
The album explores love and soulfulness, with the themes inspired by locations he visited, including Portugal, the Swiss Alps, and Santa Monica, which Meek now calls home. “Love is a consciousness here, interacting with the lovers, greeting them, watching them sometimes, becoming them sometimes.”
The album was recorded and mixed in two weeks at the border town of Tornillo by Adrian Olsen, who also performed the sound manipulation via modular synthesizer that can be heard throughout the album. Produced by the band member Mat Davidson, the approach was to make a hi-fi album (in contrast to the lo-fi Two Saviors) while preserving intimacy. The intention was to explore space and let the music slow down, treating the live room as a sacred space with no phones or conversation…
Meek says that love songs are the hardest to write. “Not break-up songs, but an actual love song written in earnest? That is taboo now,” he says. “Sometimes it can feel like all the great love songs have already been written.”
The lead single and title track, Haunted Mountain, is out now, co-written with Jolie Holland, who co-wrote five of the album’s songs.