Logan Farmer & Mary Lattimore Release Track 'Horsehair'

So begins A Mold For The Bell, the new album from Colorado singer-songwriter and producer Logan Farmer, out October 14th via Western Vinyl. What follows that enigmatic lyric is a collection of stark and ambient folk songs, tethered solely by Farmer's unadorned vocals, acoustic guitar and moving embellishments from contributors like saxophonist Joseph Shabason. They have shared the track "Horsehair" today, with added instrumentation beautifully performed by renowned harpist Mary Lattimore.

Logan Farmer explains, "I've been writing music for over half my life, but lyrically, I'd say that Horsehair is one of the best things I've ever written, at least insofar as clarity is concerned. It's the song that I've been trying - but struggling - to write for years. A quiet meditation on memory, trauma, and the creation of art in the face of global crises. Despite little impressionistic details here and there, the piece is also much more personal than most of the stuff I write, so what an absolute honor it was to have one of my favorite living composers - Mary Lattimore - contribute harp. Seriously, a dream come true."

With the help of Grammy-nominated producer Andrew Berlin (Gregory Alan Isakov), Farmer tracked all of the vocal and guitar parts over two days in the early months of 2021. The tracks were recorded quickly, live in the studio to capture the raw intimacy and immediacy of Farmer's live performances. The rest of the album's creation occurred remotely, over texts, phone calls and emails with Shabason and a handful of other musicians as wildfires, insurrections and the pandemic raged around them.

"I was working at a bookstore that winter," Farmer explains, "and I'd walk to my shift every day, obsessing over lyrics and early mixes in a cheap pair of earbuds." These daily walks would take him past a church, where he'd often stop on the sidewalk and listen to the bells at the top of the hour. "I've always loved the sound of church bells, but as the situation worsened, what began as a comfort began to feel ominous, almost threatening."

This experience, alongside influences as disparate as Tarkovsky's film Andrei Rublev and the novels of Olga Tokarczuk, led to a collection of songs that are similarly foreboding, expanding upon the stark and spacious universe of Farmer's last album (2020's Still No Mother) to reveal an atmosphere that's even more oppressively still, like an abandoned Victorian home.

Unlike its predecessor, which was a personal exploration of Farmer's climate anxiety, A Mold For The Bell reads like a collection of short stories, a series of disparate voices and doomed romances that seek dignity in a time of environmental and societal collapse. Lyrical imagery like bells, ruins, and archways appear repeatedly throughout the album, giving the impression that you're overhearing a conversation, hushed and in confidence.

Watch the new lyric video here: