Mountain Man have released a cover of Fiona Apple’s “Hot Knife,” the closing song from 2012’s The Idler Wheel…, as part of the band’s ongoing covers series. The folk trio have covered “Hot Knife” extensively on tour. The single, available via Nonesuch Records, below.
“If we followed Questlove’s advice and made gratitude lists before we went to bed every night, Fiona Apple would be at the top every time,” the band wrote in a press statement. “She tells the truth like no one else does. Thank you, Fiona Apple. We love you.” “Hot Knife” has been a concert cover favourite, though this is the first time a recording has been released. The incantatory harmony is spare, while still evoking that long-ago concert sound of bodies crowded around a microphone.
Last year, Mountain Man also covered Kacey Musgraves’ “Slow Burn.” The group has previously shared covers of songs by John Denver and Wilco, plus Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas.”
Sylvan Esso is Amelia Randall Meath and Nick Sanborn. A Band. With the swift demise of concerts as we know them this year, the live album has taken on a significance it’s not enjoyed for the better part of a half-century. So lucky were we that Sylvan Esso released “With” and its accompanying concert film a month into what felt like the end of everything good. Calling on a row of musician-friends hailing from Landlady, Hand Habits, Bon Iver,Mountain Man, and Mr Twin Sister, the already-great-live duo burn through a jaw-dropping set that recasts their catalogue with the warmth of eight further beating hearts, giving fans less of a reason to mourn the shows that could not be, but rather a glimmer of those to look forward to yet.
Surprise! Our new “With Love” EP, featuring songs from the extra special From The Satellite performance, is available for streaming. Like its sister record “With” this album reimagines Sylvan Esso’s works as a full band, adding new layers and textures to these classic songs. The live version of “Free” at the end of this is hauntingly, intimately perfect. Twenty minutes and fifty eight seconds of sublime joy. The big band Sylvan Esso vibe is the finest thing there is.
This tour existed only to exist, not to promote a new album or celebrate a milestone. No, Sylvan Esso simply wanted to do something fun. For themselves, for their fans, and for us, their friends, who got easily roped into being in the ten piece band. We were all sent the song list in advance, with just a few written ideas of what some of us could do on each song, but largely it all remained open for interpretation and when we convened in the house to rehearse in Durham for the first time. On the first day we played the song “Wolf,” checking the pulse of the band, how would we sound together, how would we arrange together, and how much homework did everyone actually do? The first take of that song put everyone immediately at ease and also turned up the temperature. Because it went really well. We knew how good this could sound, how different it could be from the original recordings and how special that would feel for the crowd, and for us. “Wolf” ended up being the first song in the set. “Wolf” became the anchor, before the rocket ship would take off each night. Yes I know I made a boat analogy early. And now I’ve shifted to space. That’s an accurate representation of how this show ended up.
The first four days we would just keep chipping away at songs, written on a large piece of butcher paper on the wall in fat marker, and we’d cross them off one by one as we hit them. The first day was a dream because we learned five songs and they all sounded great. The second day was impossible, because we had to learn five more songs, and then suddenly the songs from the first day weren’t so perfect anymore. That’s the big problem with getting better. Your ceiling goes up, the standards rise, and the goods can always keep improving, which means, in more pessimistic terms, it can always also keep sounding worse. There were twenty songs to learn, so there was a lot of bucking and bobbing back and forth between feeling over-confident and supremely challenged. Sometimes that had to do with how hungry we were.
After the family style rehearsals concluded, we headed to Los Angeles for tech rehearsal. To get there involved thirteen of us, band and crew, flying on an airplane. Thirteen people each checking three bags. Thirteen people moving through the airport together is insane. It’s like a school trip. After the tour was done Nick and Amelia remarked on how ridiculous it was that we didn’t do any warm-up shows, how insane it was that we jumped into the fire at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, a Frank Gehry designed space for the LA Philharmonic where a portion of the audience sits behind you. But we did it. For over two thousand people on night one, we did it, and we did it surprisingly well. We had our expectations set to cautious, because sometimes the first show can be a true disaster, it almost is supposed to be, but everyone cared so much and worked so hard and the stakes felt so high that somehow a meltdown just didn’t happen.
The last two shows were homecoming shows in Durham, a little different feeling from the classic theatres, and these were the shows that were filmed for what you’re seeing here and now. I’m excited to watch it just so I can see the light show from the front. We were so sad when it ended but there wasn’t a formal goodbye. Folks trickled off to go home, and a bunch of us watched a movie the next day. It’s implied that we will be together again, we’re just not sure how or when. Those of us who don’t live in North Carolina feel ourselves threatening ourselves to move there, but I don’t see it happening for me. I like being called to serve and being swept into the vortex, then returning home to wait for the next vortex to assemble
Mountain Man the trio of Amelia Meath, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, and Molly Sarlé—releases Mountain Man“Sings Simple Gifts”, the latest in its series of cover singles, featuring its version of the 1848 Shaker hymn, today. The digital single follows previous editions in the Mountain Man“Sings” series, which also includes the band’s versions of Kacey Musgraves’ “Slow Burn,”Wilco’s “You and I,” John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” and the Irving Berlin holiday classic “White Christmas.” Last month, Nonesuch released Mountain Man’s live album, Look at Me Don’t Look at Me, recorded in November 2018 at Saint Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle.
“‘Simple Gifts’ is one of those incredible songs that transforms you while you sing it,” says the trio. “It’s like an incantation, and it was a joy to record.”
Our version of the Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts” is out everywhere today. “Simple Gifts” is one of those incredible songs that transforms you while you sing it. It’s like an incantation, and it was a joy to record.
Electronic duo and festival favourites Sylvan Esso will release their highly anticipated third LP later this month, and it feels like the perfect time to receive their buoyant, joyful, dance-inducing music. “It’s a record about being increasingly terrified of the world around you and looking inward to remember all the times when loving other people seemed so easy, so that you can find your way back to that place,” the pair said in a statement. Sylvan Esso is made up of Amelia Meath (who you also may know from her folk project Mountain Man) and producer Nick Sanborn. Their music has become increasingly polished over the years, first catching fire with more ambient songs like “Hey Mami” and “Coffee” on their 2014 self-titled debut and following it with 2017’s more pop-forward What Now. Free Love seems to position them somewhere in between those two sounds. Single “Ferris Wheel” is tremendously fun, but it’s also weirdly cleansing. Meath describes this phenomenon best: “Nick wants things to sound unsettling, but I want you to take your shirt off and dance.” There you have it.
We are thrilled to announce our third album, Free Love, will be out 9.25.20
It’s a record about being increasingly terrified of the world around you and looking inward to remember all the times when loving other people seemed so easy, so that you can find your way back to that place.
This first single, Ferris Wheel, is about discovering your power and awkwardly figuring out how to wield it. It’s for the summer, it’s for you, we hope you like it.
Folk trio and a capella angels Mountain Man—aka Sylvan Esso’s Amelia Meath, Daughter of Swords’ Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Molly Sarlé have released a new live album called “Lookat Me Don’t Look at Me” recorded in November of 2018 at Saint Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle. It contains songs from their 2018 studio album Magic Ship, as well as covers of Fiona Apple’s “Hot Knife” and Michael Hurley’s “Blue Mountain,” which you can hear below.
The Look at Me Don’t Look at Me Tour was our first tour together in 10 years – it was a wild and magical ride and we are excited to share a live recording from a show we played at a beautiful verbed out church in Seattle! One of our favourite things in life is singing together to a bunch of people in a room. We hope this recording brings you some of the joy you may have been missing until the next time we can all be together.
Molly Sarlé is one-third of the folk trio Mountain Man, but she steps into the spotlight on her first solo album, Karaoke Angel. Across its 10 tracks, she explores sexuality, vulnerability, self-determination, and the cathartic power of karaoke. She recorded the album with Sam Evian, who also produced the record, in Woodstock, New York.
Mountain Man are a very special band because not only are Molly Sarlé, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Amelia Meath great as a group, but they’re also all creators of other accomplished projects. Meath is one-half of synth-pop duo Sylvan Esso, Sauser-Monnig makes thoughtful folk music under the alias Daughter of Swords, and Sarlé writes stunning, roomy songs under her own name. Sarlé’s new album Karaoke Angel was written and recorded over the span of three years and as many places, from a trailer in Big Sur to home in North Carolina to a studio in Woodstock, N.Y.
The debut solo album from Sarlé (1/3 of Mountain Man) is finally here! Karaoke Angel is a cathartic intimate record with melodies that will stick in your head for days.Sarlé explores heavy topics like addiction, suicide, and sexuality with touches of humor and droves of empathy.
“Twisted” is from Molly Sarlé’s new album, Karaoke Angel, out 9.20.19 on Partisan Records.
The year is just halfway through, but 2019 has already been a big one for Alexandra Sauser-Monnig. The musician best known as one-third of Mountain Man, the folk trio who made their comeback with last year’s beautiful Magic Ship, announced earlier this year that her debut solo record was en route. Dawnbreaker arrives less than a year after Magic Ship, Mountain Man’s second album as a trio and their first after an eight-year hiatus. It’s a gentle 10-song collection of rustling folk-pop.
Dawnbreaker is the first album Alexandra Sauser-Monnig she has released under the name Daughter of Swords. To celebrate its release (it’s out today via Nonesuch Records) Sauser-Monnig broke the album down for us track-by-track.
“Fellows”
The guitar line of “Fellows” materialized while I was living in a beautiful, ramshackle old farmhouse in rural Virginia with a former partner, and the words later while camping high up a California mountain road on a break from touring with Feist many years ago. The writing of the song spanned the end of one relationship and the beginning of another, and it reflects on the futility of defining yourself through your relationship to a partner.
“Gem”
“Gem” was the first song that Nick Sanborn — who engineered, co-produced, mixed and played on the record — and I collaborated on arranging. He’s really good at following what’s fun, and pivoting to another song or idea or approach when the joy or the energy feels like it’s beginning to lag. After having recorded a couple of pretty spare demos and takes, this song ventured into new terrain and was the first time the breadth of the spectrum of sound and arrangement of the record became clear.
“Shining Woman”
I wrote this song when I was feeling wrapped up about what being an adult person with a womb means. Writing it felt like a reminder to myself that the world is full of inspiring people choosing to make their own paths through life liberated from the cultural and biological script. The main character of the song took up residence in my mind and served as a reminder to me that change is always possible.
“Fields of Gold”
Drummer Joe Westerlund, formerly of Megafaun and currently of Mandolin Orange, played a large role in shaping the feel of “Fields of Gold.” He is a wizard of aux percussion and has a library of things to make sounds with, from shakers and bells to custom made metal sculptures that you play with a bow to things nature made that happen to sound beautiful. He lived next door to the studio where Dawnbreaker was made, and for a couple of magical days made complicated, delicate percussive arrangements holding more percussion in his hands than seemed humanly possible before I saw him in action.
“Grasses”
“Grasses” is a meditation on acceptance. I wrote the words when I was sick with tick-borne illness. My body felt really wrong and I was having trouble getting any insight or advice, or even a diagnosis from doctors. So all I knew was that I felt terrible and that it wasn’t getting better. I sang “Grasses” to myself while lying in bed in an effort to comfort myself and to get down from the high ledges of fear and panic I was on in my mind.
“Easy is Hard”
Country was the first kind of music that made me feel something potent that I couldn’t name. It’s often where my songwriting begins, even if it doesn’t stay there. “Easy is Hard” follows its own logic, but feels like one of the songs on the record whose roots are most obviously in country.
“Rising Sun”
For a while I had an old worn out Sun Records tape of Billy Lee Riley songs in my car. I was in a very transitional phase of life and latched onto this tape and listened to it all the time in a way that gave me the tiniest sense of stability. I learned a blues shuffle off of it and wrote a different version of the song, which is “Rising Sun.” One of my favorite moments on the record is the end of this song — as the band fades out, the voices of Mountain Man fade in, humming like the highway and ending with all our voices and the sound of the room predominant in an unexpected way.
“Long Leaf Pine”
I had just moved to North Carolina and had been out blackberry picking and exploring the woods behind my house when I wrote “Long Leaf Pine.” I came back in and sat down and the song came out more or less complete. Recording it was equally magical — Nick Sanborn and I had been trying different arrangements of the song, and had started over again, making some kind of far out choices. It had started snowing outside when Amelia Meath and Molly Sarlé came over. They sang beautiful witchy harmonies while snow was falling outside the window and contextualized everything else beautifully within the realm of harmony.
“Human”
This was another song that appeared mostly formed very fast. I’ve had the possibly common but definitely surreal experience a few times of my subconscious delivering up verdicts on my life choices in song form before the rest of my mind is ready to acknowledge whatever it is, and that was the case with Human. We recorded the song, and then I left it alone for almost a year without even listening to it. There was a point that I didn’t want it on the record because it’s so raw. But now its presence feels crucial to me in the arc of the record.
“Dawnbreaker”
“Dawnbreaker” is a dive into the ways imagining possible transmogrification into a different life form sometimes feels preferable to facing the hard emotional truths of life with a human consciousness. This last track on the record was one of the first takes that we recorded, and it was recorded as a demo. For a while, I wanted to get a different take to use, but none of the subsequent takes had the same rawness and tentative energy that ultimately felt so right as a note to end on.
Daughter of Swords, the new project of Alexandra Sauser-Monnig of Mountain Man, has shared the track “Gem”, the first peek into her solo output. Of the song, Sauser-Monnig says “‘Gem’ is about that omnipotent feeling you get when you’re falling in love and the rules haven’t been made yet. When everything feels possible and the world looks beautiful and shining, and at the same time, you and the world are kind of dented from human contact. This was the first song Nick Sanborn (Sylvan Esso) and I produced together. It was so much fun. To me, with its messed up little drum beat and unrelenting optimism, it feels like a romance novel in song form being played out of a tiny, broken cassette player.”
“Gem” is available everywhere now and Daughter of Swords debut album is due summer 2019 on Bella Union/Nonesuch. Additionally, Daughter of Swords has announced two New York shows in November with SylvanEsso at the Beacon Theatre, with more tour dates to come.
About “Gem” and Daughter of Swords: There’s a patience in the little things. The arc of sticky summers brimming and eventually cooling, grasses overgrowing before being cut to stubs, creeks rushing to an eventual trickle, night skies growing darker before dawn breaks. In stillness and in presence, we can allow these archetypes to pervade our experience and teach us lessons as old as time and reflexive in every organism’s makeup. This clarity is present in every note of “Gem”, the debut release from Daughter of Swords – Alexandra Sauser-Monnig of Mountain Man. Starting small on a creaky old guitar, a single voice in the air, these meditations were brought to life over the winter in a tiny house at the centre of a creative commune. It’s a compass set, an intention stated, a window flung open to let the summer air in – buoyant, resilient, golden.
Daughter of Swords—Alexandra Sauser-Monnig of Mountain Man—performs “Gem.”
The year isn’t yet halfway through, but 2019 has already been a big one for Alexandra Sauser-Monnig. The musician best known as being one-third of Mountain Man, the folk trio who made their comeback with last year’s beautiful Magic Ship, announced earlier this year that her debut solo record is en route: Dawnbreaker is out June 28th on Nonesuch Records.
Sauser-Monnig says, The last line of the last song on the record is ‘Dawn breaking.’ And I feel like I was sitting at dinner with some friends and it was like towards the end of recording the album, and we were talking about names for the record. And ‘Dawnbreaker’ had come up for me and through talking, like maybe my friend Amelia [Meath] had also had that same thought or just confirmed the great idea. But it sort of does feel like a ship name or starting out on a new foot. There are all sorts of different images or ideas that come up with it.
It arrives less than a year after Magic Ship, Mountain Man’s second album as a trio and their first after an eight-year hiatus.
Following previously released singles “Gem” and the title track, The spritely new tune “Shining Woman” with a fitting video. Documenting a chance encounter with a striking woman, the song works like folklore, as if the woman in question (portrayed in the video by one of Sauser-Monnig’s friends who donned a pair of “shining” gold pants) is so arresting she’s not even real. Was she ever really there? “She rode away into the breeze,” Sauser-Monnig sings over a quietly looping drum beat and a polite electric guitar. The video, which you can watch below, culminates in a twilight gathering of cyclists that looks like a lovely way to send off the day.
Daughter of Swords new album, “Dawnbreaker”, out 28th June.2019.
We are very pleased to introduce you all to Daughter of Swords, the solo project from Mountain Man’s Alexandra Sauser-Monnig. Listen to the beautiful first single “Gem” now + stay tuned for more news.
Mountain Man’s Alexandra Sauser-Monnig is stepping out on her own with her debut solo album, titled Dawnbreaker(out June 28th on Nonesuch Records), also her first full-length under the Daughter of Swords name. “Dawnbreaker” is an airy acoustic dream track with rumbling chords so warm and inviting you’ll want to sink into them like a bath. Sauser-Monnig, who wrote many of Dawnbreaker’s 10 tracks while anticipating the dissolution of a relationship, sees life mirrored in nature, likening herself to “a white rose,” “red hawk,” “hollow reed” or even “just a leaf” at different points in the song.
“Dawnbreaker” is on the debut album from Daughter of Swords, out 28th june via Nonesuch Records.
The Fat Angel Sings 