Spirits of the Red City are an assemblage of musicians from around the United States. It's a scenario that can make the "simple" things we expect from bands like, say, touring and recording, incredibly complicated. Spirits has members located in Minnesota, New York, Alaska, California, Colorado, and Michigan, making it little wonder that it has taken until now for the band to follow up their wonderful 2009 release Hunter Moon.
"Halfway Poem" is a taste from Jula, the band's follow-up album that will be released on September 24th by Collectible Records.
"Halfway Poem" evokes the sound of a traveler hopping trains and escaping from a frenetic life, entering euphoric communion with...something. The landscape? A lover? With it's triumphant incantation — "There is no one you belong to now" — it revels in minute complexities and obfuscations of intimacy. It surprises expectations, slightly turning from pattern when you're feeling most comforted by it. It turns away from the mantra at the heart of the song as the incantation fades each time into a single, "I belong to you," an intimacy that could, as Spirits perform it, as easily be said into the silence as to another person — both expansive and intimate.
You can hear the Prefix Premiere of "Halfway Poem" below. (And two other tracks from the record are avialable on the label's Soundcloud page.)
Jula, recorded by Kevin Ratterman in Louisville's La La Land studios, will be released on September 24th via Collectible Records. Jula is available for pre-order beginning today.