Peter Mulvey Unveils Aching New Single 'Who's Gonna Love You Now?'; New Album Out 2/15

Folk ambassasdor Peter Mulvey has been a singer, songwriter, road-dog, raconteur, and an almost-poet since before he can remember. With a career spanning nearly three decades, eighteen albums, and countless live performances worldwide, Mulvey has built his life's work on collaboration and on an instinct for the eclectic and the vital. On February 15th, he'll release his most vivid album yet titled There Is Another World via Righteous Babe Records. Today he unveiled his aching new single "Who's Gonna Love You Now?" comprised of warm fingerpicked guitar, cloud-like pedal steel, and a piano altered to sound like buoys in fog.

"Personal pain brought creative gain to Peter Mulvey in the form of his upcoming 18th album," said Billboard. Of the song, they stated "The subdued, contemplative track sets the tone for the album."

Early in 2017, a series of upheavals found Mulvey living through the winter in a friend's empty house in the small midwestern town of Fort Atkinson. Unmoored and lost in the middle of his life, he spent hours each day walking along the frozen marsh of the Bark River and through the wintry oak savannah nearby. The songs came in fast and strange and emotional, which Mulvey transcribed during the night at a table in the vacant house. These songs became his new album, a powerful dreamscape of imagistic, haiku-like auditory sketches, within which are plenty of wrenching, haunting, and even sweet songs.

Produced by Todd Sickafoose (Ani DiFranco, Anais Mitchell, Andrew Bird), the thirteen track effort amounts to a remarkable, brief, potent stab. Alienation, loss, and heartbreak; all are rendered lucid, even beautiful, in the bright-dark sideways light of deep winter. It is also a story of renewal, through close attention and a determined stillness, a piercing gaze toward detail and an opening toward simple acceptance of what is.

The album's lead track "The Fox" is a hypnotic pulse of altered guitar within a swirl of sounds: wineglass rims, the long breaths and clatter of a bass clarinet, and icy accordion tones underneath Mulvey's gravel baritone vocals. Folk Alley stated, "Usually, Peter Mulvey is a comfort; his guitar style, his voice, his wry smile when he delivers his clever, heart-filled lyrics. ['The Fox'] sounds urgent, not comfortable." Also out now is "Fool's Errand," a warm, wistful, up-tempo reminiscense of life summed up over driving, strummed guitar and soaring pedal steel. Parade Magazinedescribed "Folky acoustic guitar and plaintive lead lines punctuate this reflective tune from a master songwriter."

Listen here:

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