COURSE Announce New Album 'Tight Feathers'

Chicago-based group COURSE announced today their new album Tight Feathers will release on October 20th. The anticipated follow-up to their critically acclaimed debut, Tight Feathers embraces the chaotic onslaught of life, savoring its complexities, while protecting your inner self.

The band also shared the official video for their new single “Too Busy For Feelings,” a Severance-meets-Everything Everywhere All At Once-inspired take on the frenetic energy of everyday life, directed by Maria Belafonte and featuring actor Katy Fullan among other special guests.

"In all honesty, my therapist told me I'm too busy for feelings and I wanted to dig deeper into that by writing a song that really dissected what it meant for me and probably many other people,” said singer/guitarist/songwriter Jessica Robbins.

“I think it's a really relatable sentiment especially in the modern age. So my producer and I sat down and wrote the song together, discussing what it meant to be too busy for your emotions and the consequences of that. It's interesting to me that it ended up being a very upbeat, feel good song with almost a freedom to the melody. It's a song that from the get go was a joy to sing and just felt like a release.”

Of the video, she continued, “My friend Milo Borsuk produced the video and brought on Maria Belafonte to direct and they totally understood the vision and made it better than I could have imagined. They were wonderful to work with and brought together an amazing team of people to work on the video.

Katy Fullan, the lead in the video, is a long time friend of mine from the days back when I played guitar for an improv group for eight years in Chicago. I knew she would be perfect for the role. I also recruited some of my other actor friends who all agreed to be a part of the video and I am so grateful.

They are all extremely talented and nice and I feel so lucky to have had them be a part of this. When I was making the album, I watched the show Severance so this music video is a little nod to one of my favorite shows. Because, in the end, you can't outrun your feelings even if you try.”

Melding an enchanting mix of bedroom-pop, alt-electronic and indie-rock, COURSE made their auspicious debut in 2021 with their full-length album A Late Hour featuring the “optimistic” (Consequence) breakout single “Sixteen.”

Fronted by Robbins, the dreamy synth-pop collection of intricate, collaborative narratives pulled from both imagination and real life experiences, produced by Dan Dusinsky and featuring fellow Chicago artist Kevin Prchal.

The album was met with critical acclaim including American Songwriter, Under The Radar, and Chicago Tribune who called it “a body of work that stands strong” while Atwood Magazine named the band an Artist to Watch in 2021. A Late Hour was also accompanied by a collection of short stories, one for each song on the album, written by Robbins called Nickels Under Your Porch.

With Tight Feathers, COURSE presents a more ornately developed, atmospheric sound to accompany their characteristically narrative anthems. Produced by Nashville indie-electropop wizard Kyle Andrews, each track presents carefully layered instrumentation (modular synths, analog drum machines, acoustic and electric guitar, bass), blooming with new textures as each musical line unfolds.

Tight Feathers features contributions from a rotating cast of top-tier musicians, most notably vocalist Jamie Semel, who’s ethereal, rich harmonies offer the perfect foil to Robbins’ subtle force.

As a whole, the album balances a series of delicately contradictory emotions, both buoyant and foreboding. More elaborate than past COURSE releases, Tight Feathers is laced with sharply written reflections on the busyness of modern life. The resulting album demonstrates a particularly relatable kind of existential anxiety—hovering tone-wise between carefree and swamped, happy and overwhelmed, light-as-a-feather and unavoidably ominous.

At times, the album drifts into nostalgic territory in the vein of acts like Best Coast or Tennis, but the songs are never saccharine: There remains a familiar hint of anxiety at the root of each track, grounding the music firmly in the modern confusion of the real world.

Photo Credit: Savannah Scruggs

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