€25.00
Out of stock
Release Date – 9th April 2021
Limited edition LP format with extra heavy textured jackets and metallic silver ink. LP includes 12” square insert with lyrics and
images of the artist, and download. The raw inspiration for Vague Tidings came from a 2006 DIY tour of the 49th state. It was a trip that
went off the beaten path sometimes a bit too far for comfort. Now, over a decade later, listeners find Joe O’Connell aka Elephant Micah
stationed at a creaky spinet piano, singing about the Alaskan sky. Throughout, his lyrics take a new angle on a pet theme: human
encounters with the natural world. Vague Tidings places these encounters in the American West and, at times, in its sci-fi corollary,
outer space. Its imagery draws from the allure of Alaska, the idea of Western prosperity, and the human relationship to wilderness
more broadly. Often, O’Connell sings about the goal of capturing and commodifying nature. In poetic sketches of resource extraction
industries and dark sky tourism, frontier lust runs amok. Pipelines catch fire and stars disappear, all to the tune of a stark, uncanny
Americana. Vague Tidings is a sustained, hallucinatory rendering of this theme. In style, its eight songs follow a switchback path
between foggy incantations and mountain anthems. Made with a small cohort of acoustic instrumentalists, the record is rough hewn,
but easy on the ears. To put Vague Tidings down on tape, O’Connell assembled some of his favorite musicians in Raleigh-Durham,
North Carolina area, where he’s lived since 2015: Libby Rodenbough (Mipso) bows and plucks a detuned fiddle, Matt Douglas
(Mountain Goats) breathes life into various woodwinds, and Matt O’Connell (Lean Year) sets the pace on a two-piece drum set. Their
loose, imaginative playing pushes Vague Tidings beyond the singer-songwriter genre into something richer in texture. Ultimately, this is
foreboding but spacious music, with plenty of room for reconsidering life on earth. “echoes Will Oldham, Bon Iver and Low, but
ultimately is O’Connell’s own, very special thing.” UNCUT // “Lovely songs…” MOJO // “Big Time Fan Of Elephant Micah!!! This is
beautiful work” Ryley Walker // Also Available From Elephant Micah: Genericana LP/CD, Arctic White LP, Where In Our Woods LP/CD.
Track listing: 01 Glacier Advisors 02 Eastern Callers 03 Pipe Diversions Bored Auroras 04 The Cantor The Labrador 05 Return to the
Abandoned Observatory 06 From Anti Gravity 07 Occidental Blue 08 Vague Tidings
