Dear Friends,

I am thrilled to be able to tell you all that our new record, Forever, I’ve Been Being Born, is finally coming out! The official album release date is November, 28th, but the first single off the album, titled “Gentle Chaperone” (Featuring Marissa Nadler), is available everywhere now where music is converted to ones and zeros.

If you live in Europe or the UK you can pre order the vinyl LP and CD now via Band Camp, but here in the states, the vinyl is coming out on Record Store Day, Black Friday. So def put word in at your favorite record store that you intend to buy the album so that they order it;)

We are fortunate to be partnering with Southern Lord Records here in the states and Ideologic Organ in Europe. Two very cool art house labels, that we could not be prouder to be a part of.

I’m saving my words about the album as a whole piece, until closer to its proper release ….

….. but the reason I chose Gentle Chaperone as the first of three singles, is because in many ways it encompasses most of the themes the record seems to be exploring. The song is an ode to emotional dislocation, magical thinking, death and transformation.

Not to spill the beans, but here’s a little description from the press release:

This album is our attempt to create elegant folk and sometimes ragged, cosmic, heart rendered songs full of eulogies and laments.

 “When we started recording this album,  I remember saying, “Play the songs as if the edge of a butterfly wing was brushing against your cheek in the dark while you’re holding a small child. I wanted to connote tenderness and a state of grace in the wake of resolution. I was coming out of a bad depression at the time, relieved I wanted to pick up my guitar again after an insanely long dry spell, but also I was paying homage to the knowledge of an emerging, menacing undertone in the collective psyche that was bigger than me, which might have been what compelled me to pick it up that day back in 2015.”

I must also mention that I wrote it right before our beloved dog died. She was almost 16 at the time and I knew it was coming, her death. She was at my feet when it was written, so she’s enmeshed in the body of the song. I was consoling myself and my future self, knowing she’d be gone by the time the song would see the light of day. Songs are time machines. Portals. She’s right there inside of it now, eating her snow, which was all she wanted to do the last few weeks of her life.

I hope it and this video resonate with you, and I look forward to sharing a couple more singles and many more words from the heart, in the coming weeks/months, before the big unveiling this November.

As I say in the press release “Listen in the dark,”

“O my gentle chaperone, this is where I stay, but this is not my home.” — J. Sykes