Winter Aid Release New Single '20th And Mississippi' From Upcoming Sophomore LP

San Francisco-based, Irish songwriter Shane Culloty, aka Winter Aid, has released the latest single, “20th and Mississippi,” from this upcoming sophomore full-length album, Pull The Sky Inside, due out May 17.

The 15-song collection was produced with Larry Crane (Elliott Smith, The Decemberists) and Chuck Johnson (Daniel Bachman, Claire Rousay). Pull The Sky Inside finds Culloty stretching the extremities as to what is sonically expected from a collection of Winter Aid songs, weaving in electronic sonic strands and new percussive elements.

 Discussing the track, Culloty offered, “'20th and Mississippi' was inspired by a painting by the same name by a San Francisco artist, Robert Bechtle, of an intersection near my home. It captured the isolation and bleakness that descended as the pandemic dragged on. The deepening anxiety I found myself dealing with after the pandemic, along with an episode in the mountains, when I attempted to escape it all." 

Having uprooted from Dublin to San Francisco with his wife, assimilating to life in a new city and country shortly led into the pandemic, which, between lockdown, elopement, and immigration form-filling, delayed new musical activities. That gestation period, though, led Shane to his most realized collection of songs.

The title-track, “Pull The Sky Inside,” was written in the midst of the pandemic, a period of struggle in a new city, far away from family. “I would spend a lot of time watching the sun go down over San Francisco,” notes Culloty. "I was struck by the idea of pulling the sunset sky indoors to preserve it and fall asleep in it. It seemed like a good solution to the darkness I was experiencing and once I finally recorded the line and finished the song, things felt a lot easier.”

Ultimately Pull The Sky Inside captures that sense of displacement: feeling a bit unmoored and out of place, but constantly trying to explore new scenery. It's a record with one foot in Culloty's homeland back in Ireland, while very much a reflection of his new surroundings and making sense of everything going on around him.

Shane re-emerged with Winter Aid, but was never really out of mind, with the continued success of his very first single, “The Wisp Sings,” which has garnered well over 300 million streams across all platforms, and 3 billion posts on TikTok.

Culloty celebrated the 10th anniversary of his EP of the same title, last Autumn, and earlier this year, released the Inner Sunset EP. During this time, Shane spoke to the Irish national broadcaster RTE about the enduring life of his most popular tune, and recently with The London Sunday Times about using the power of social media to exist as a musician outside the traditional label format.