Friday, August 9, 2019 · 7:00 PM
Out of Space 2019
Mandolin Orange and I'm With Her
presented by SPACE and Old Town School of Folk Music
1030 Central St, Evanston · Canal Shores Golf Course
Friday, August 9, 2019 · 7:00 PM
1030 Central St, Evanston · Canal Shores Golf Course
Mandolin Orange's music radiates a mysterious warmth —their songs feel like whispered secrets, one hand cupped to your ear. The North Carolina duo have built a steady and growing fanbase with this kind of intimacy, and on Tides of A Teardrop, due out February 1, it is more potent than ever. By all accounts, it is the duo's fullest, richest, and most personal effort. You can hear the air between them—the taut space of shared understanding, as palpable as a magnetic field, that makes their music sound like two halves of an endlessly completing thought. Singer-songwriter Andrew Marlin and multi-instrumentalist Emily Frantz have honed this lamp glow intimacy for years.
On Tides of A Teardrop, Marlin wrote the songs, as he usually does, in a sort of stream of consciousness, allowing words and phrases to pour out of him as he hunted for the chords and melodies. Then, as he went back to sharpen what he found, he found something troubling and profound. Intimations of loss have always haunted the edges of their music, their lyrics hinting at impermanence and passing of time. But Tides of A Teardrop confronts a defining loss head-on: Marlin's mother, who died of complications from surgery when he was 18.
These songs, as well as their sentiments, remain simple and quiet, like all of their music. But beneath the hushed surface, they are staggeringly straightforward. “I've been holding on to the grief for a long time. In some ways I associated the grief and the loss with remembering my mom. I feel like I've mourned long enough. I'm ready to bring forth some happier memories now, to just remember her as a living being."
For this album, Marlin and Frantz enlisted their touring band, who they also worked with on their last album Blindfaller. Having recorded all previous albums live in the studio, they approached the recording process in a different way this time. “We went and did what most people do, which we've never done before—we just holed up somewhere and worked the tunes out together,” Frantz says. There is a telepathy and warmth in the interplay on Tides of A Teardrop that brings a new dynamic to the foreground—that holy silence between notes, the air that charges the album with such profound intimacy. “This record is a little more cosmic, almost in a spiritual way—the space between the notes was there to suggest all those empty spaces the record touches on,” acknowledges Marlin. There are many powerful ways of acknowledging loss; sometimes the most powerful one is saying nothing at all.
I'm With Her is a band rooted in a rare alchemy: three celebrated songwriters coming together to create music that reveals entirely new possibilities in their distinct and deep-seated talents. Since forming in 2014, Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, and Aoife O'Donovan have imbued their songs with a sharply detailed lyricism, graceful musicianship, and—perhaps most powerfully—mesmerizing harmonies that endlessly reflect their extraordinary chemistry.
The latest single from I'm With Her, “Call My Name” again shows the strength and vitality of their singular connection. In a departure from the deliberately insular making of their debut album See You Around, the band pursued a new creative approach centered on true collaboration with producer Mike Elizondo (Regina Spektor, Fiona Apple). Recorded at Sound Emporium Studios in Nashville, “Call My Name” finds Elizondo building a hypnotic sonic backdrop, matching the track's quietly urgent beat with I'm With Her's delicate interplay of guitar, Wurlitzer, and fiddle. The result is a song both stark and luminous, perfectly capturing the potent tension within even the most loving relationship.
After years of crossing paths in their intersecting music scenes, Watkins, Jarosz, and O'Donovan founded I'm With Her following an impromptu gig at the Sheridan Opera House in Telluride. Over the coming years they began playing shows and festivals around the world, in addition to taking time out for a number of intensely focused writing sessions (including eight days spent in purposeful seclusion at a borrowed Vermont farmhouse). Arriving in early 2018, See You Around quickly drew critical acclaim and ultimately graced best-of-the-year lists from leading outlets like the New York Times, NPR Music, and Paste.
Along with See You Around, 2018 saw the release of multiple singles from I'm With Her, including a remix by Tune-Yards of “Game to Lose,” a rendition of Adele's “Send My Love (To Your New Lover),” and a Spotify Session featuring their version of Vampire Weekend's “Hannah Hunt” (a cover that fast became a fan favorite at shows). Nominated for Duo/Group of the Year by the Americana Music Association and Artist of the Year at the International Folk Music Awards, the band has also taken the stage on late-night shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Last Call with Carson Daly. With upcoming U.S. performances including the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, House of Blues in Boston, The Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and Red Rocks Ampitheatre in Colorado, I'm With Her will soon return to Europe as well as make their debut across Australia.
