In February, Bonny Light Horseman announced that they had signed to Jagjaguwar and shared their debut single for the label – When I Was Younger – accompanied by a lyric video featuring footage of Anaïs Mitchell, Eric D. Johnson, and Josh Kaufman performing at Levis (pronounced: “leh-viss”) Corner House–a century-old Irish watering hole in Ballydehob, County Cork.
We all knew that bigger news was sure to follow, and today, they are announcing their Jagjaguwar debut; the double album Keep Me on Your Mind/See You Free, to be released on June 7th, 2024. It’s described as an ode to the blessed mess of our humanity, with themes of love and loss, hope and sorrow, community and family, change and time permeating throughout.
It turns out that Levis Corner House is an important landmark for this album as Mitchell suggested the pub as their first recording location, based on her one conversation with owner Joe O’Leary. Stepping inside the pub’s aged confines, the trio felt an immediate connection to its palpable sense of community and of family forged over many decades. The pub’s upright piano, which they lubricated with olive oil to quiet its creaking, became a sort of spiritual fulcrum, a single entity that embodied all of the album’s motifs: imperfection as a badge of honour; ageing, endurance and the passage of time; how the simplest of acts can heal us.
Alongside the album announcement, they are sharing “I Know You Know” and their first-ever music video.
“When thinking about directors for Bonny Light Horseman’s first (!!!) ever music video, Kimberly Stuckwisch leapt to mind immediately. I’d been a longtime fan of her always-evocative work–and for our band I felt like she’d ‘get it,’” explains Johnson. “The treatment she came back with was deeply aligned with the sentiments of the song: life’s multiverse, the dualities of joy and pain, the choices we make that chart our course towards one way or another. We shot this on a salt flat in the Mojave desert, trying to outrun the sunset and packs of salty coyotes, under the watch of some wayward desert pelicans.”
The song’s feel-good, breezy melody and anthemic chorus contrast with its devastating refrain.
Pre-Order/Save Keep Me on Your Mind/See You Free: https://blh.lnk.to/keep-me-on-your-mind-see-you-free
Keep Me on Your Mind/See You Free LP Tracklist:
- Keep Me on Your Mind
- Lover Take It Easy
- I Know You Know
- grinch/funeral
- Old Dutch
- When I Was Younger
- Waiting and Waiting
- Hare and Hound
- Rock the Cradle
- Singing to the Mandolin
- The Clover
- Into the O
- Don’t Know Why You Move Me
- Speak to Me Muse
- think of the royalties, lads
- Tumblin Down
- I Wanna Be Where You Are
- Over the Pass
- Your Arms (All the Time)
- See You Free