For this week's premiere we've got an earthy, compact number from the group Cedarwell and their upcoming album "Dia Luein," due April 2. You can stream and read about "Crossing the Ocean" below.
Artists' statement
The new album is called Dia Luein. There is not a simple translation of the phrase (which is why we chose it); it has not been a simple decade for Cedarwell. Our last full length record A Stone, A Leaf, A Door was released back in 2010. During that time, we toured extensively across the US and Europe. As happens, life happened. I fell in love and got married and had kids and went back to school on both coasts and got divorced and came back home. Throughout those years and experiences, Cedarwell never officially disbanded. But we were certainly in a deep hibernation; we would only play a dozen or so shows each year and reunite for a few days to work on any songs I had written in the interim.The result of that process was a batch of 8 songs that span great emotional, geographic, and narrative distance—songs from the simplicity of single late-twenties life and from the excitement of new love/fatherhood and from the devastating confusion of separation in its myriad forms—always leaving and returning,searching for birth and life . . . and finding it!—but finding, too, the shadowy fringes of death and loss. So, after studying a smattering of ancient greek during undergrad, the complication and nuance of the un-easily-translatable Dia Luein seemed to fit the current iteration of Cedarwell. "Dia" can mean simply "during" or "through" but also carries a sense of causality, as in "because of" or even "in spite of." "Luein" also carries a spectrum of meanings from "loosening, dissolving, separating, unraveling" to "releasing, redeeming, fulfilling." This doubleness captures the duality of our real feeling about this decade:on the one hand we just held tight on "during" our various separations and distances; on the other hand, it is "because of" the unraveling of time and relationship that we find ourselves here in the present moment, releasing a record to try and capture some of all that jazz.
Sonically, the album is united by the distinctive style of Jeff Patlingrao's guitar textures, Jared Beckman's unique stand-up drum set technique, and Erik Neave's lyric alidiosyncricies and powerful vocal delivery. All eight songs were recorded at Honeytone in Neenah, Wis. -- a world class studio built inside a beautiful Victorian mansion. Because of physical distance and life in general, we could only work on it a few days a year since 2016 and finally finished in 2020! Jeff liked the studio and the people we worked with so much, he moved from Brooklyn to Wisconisn to be part of Honeytone’s production team full time.
The single is the third song on the album called "Crossing the Ocean." It is a long-distance love song so old that it references Skype! The studio version of "Crossing the Ocean" is quite different from how audiences have experienced the song live over the past several years. (This is true of much of the album). Using the recording studio as a compositional tool allowed for a lighter delicate approach and more nuanced textures throughout. Our friend, Jacquelyn Beaupre (Voulouse & former Blessed Feathers) lent her immense talents to the track singing backing vocals and playing lilting banjo.