Gum Releases New Single 'Music is Bigger Than Hair'

Today, multi-instrumentalist GUM (aka Jay Watson) is offering another taste of his forthcoming full length album Saturnia, out September 15 via Spinning Top Records, in the form of a new single and video for the track “Music Is Bigger Than Hair.”

Remarking on the track , Watson says, “Music Is Bigger Than Hair is a funny title, I think it’s referring to me getting older and feeling my mortality a little bit more, or at least my worth as a musician being tied up in the way I look. Feeling like it’s affecting my music, as if it has anything to do with it. Musically it’s one of my favorites because of Jesse Kotanskys beautiful string arrangement.”

GUM previously released the single “Would It Pain You to See?” which received attention from Stereogum, SPIN, Ghettoblaster Magazine and more.

GUM will make his way to the United States in October in support of the new album. Stops include NYC, LA, DC, Chicago and more. Tickets are on sale now here.

Over five albums fronting GUM, not to mention the nine he’s made as co-leader of psych cosmonauts Pond, Watson’s restless imagination has treated us to some of the most sonically diverse explorations of the past decade. On Saturnia, however, these visions have coalesced into the richest, but also the most coherent work of Watson’s career to date. 

Coming off the back of 2020’s Out In The World, Watson had a loose idea of where he wanted GUM to travel to next.

Sticks in hand and a rough sonic map in mind, the intervention of the pandemic and the logistics of looking after two small children meant that the songs Watson had started to write were given a previously unprecedented amount of time to percolate in his head and they slowly began to ferment and sprout new tendrils.

“Because of Covid and because I had a new kid, for the first time ever I would write songs and think about them months on end,” he says. “I’d always been a bit of a lazy arranger, but this time I was working on different sections in my head for months.”

With his mind ticking over and creative impulses sparking off new ideas all the time, Watson’s initial blueprint started to look a little different. There were new routes on this map all of a sudden.

“My dream was to make one coherent record that sounded the same all the way through, but it’s just so hard when you like so much different stuff!” he laughs. “I wanted the whole album to sound like Nick Drake at the very beginning, but it just doesn’t work out like that. I’ve got so much equipment and stuff to play with that even if I start with something that sounds like Nick Drake, I’ll starting adding things and playing with it and it will take it away into somewhere else immediately.”

The glue that holds Saturnia together, and what anchors it, is that bedrock of real-life playing and organic sounds that Watson was aiming for. But as the record evolved and grew, it proved to be the launchpad for something far wider, adventurous and musically nourishing.

The story of Saturnia is one of Watson starting in one place, finding himself somewhere completely different and in the process finding a new balance. His initial ideas may not have mapped out quite as planned, but frankly, it’s all the better for it.

Pre-order Saturnia in digital formats as well as 180g ultra clear 12” vinyl here.

NORTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES

Wed Oct 4 | Bowery Ballroom - New York, NY*

Sat Oct 7 | Black Cat - Washington, D.C.*

Tue Oct 10 | Lincoln Hall - Chicago, IL*

Thu Oct 12 | Parish - Austin, TX#

Fri Oct 13 | White Oak Music Hall - Houston, TX#

Sat Oct 14 | Club Dada - Dallas, TX#

Wed Oct 18 | Great American Music Hall - San Francisco, CA

Fri Oct 20 | Madame Lou's - Seattle, WA (early show)

Sun Oct 22 | Polaris Hall - Portland, OR

Thu Oct 26 | Lodge Room - Los Angeles, CA

* with support from GIFT

# with support from Estereomance

Photo Credit: Grant Spanier

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