DISCOGRAPHY

Jake Xerxes Fussell: Out of Sight (PoB-042)

On his third and most finely wrought album yet, Jake is joined for the first time by a full band. An utterly transporting selection of traditional narrative folksongs addressing the troubles and delights of love, work, and wine, collected from a myriad of obscure sources and deftly metamorphosed, Out of Sight contains, among other moving curiosities, a fishmonger’s cry that sounds like an astral lament; a cotton mill tune that humorously explores the unknown terrain of death and memory; and a fishermen’s shanty/gospel song equally concerned with terrestrial boozing and heavenly transcendence.

Terry Allen and the Panhandle Mystery Band: Pedal Steal + Four Corners (PoB-045)

Pedal Steal + Four Corners collects, for the first time, Allen’s radio plays and long-form narrative audio works—2.5 hours of cinematic songs, stories, and country-concrète sound collage—in a deluxe gatefold edition, including one LP, three CDs, a DL code, and a Grammy-nominated 28pp. booklet boasting the first in-depth essay to explore this singular body of work; dozens of images of Allen’s related visual art; and full scripts and credits for all five pieces.

Michael Chapman: True North (PoB-044)

The masterful follow-up to his universally celebrated 2017 album 50, Michael Chapman’s True North finds the elder statesman of British songwriting and guitar plumbing an even deeper deep and honing an ever keener edge to his iconic writing. This authoritative set of predominantly new, and utterly devastating, songs hews to a more intimate sonic signature—more atmospheric, textural, and minimalist than 50, stately and melancholy in equal measure. Steve Gunn produces and plays guitar, and Bridget St John sings, with cellist Sarah Smout and legendary pedal steel player BJ Cole.

Nap Eyes "Too Bad" Digital Album Cover

Nap Eyes: Too Bad (PoB-053)

In their first recordings released since the critically acclaimed long-player I’m Bad Now, Haligonian heroes Nap Eyes sail an autumnal wind of regret and longing. “Have You Seen the Light” exposes an inscape of illumination and revelation all too rare today. Hate begets hate, and light begets light. Too Bad? “I’ve Always Known You Care” evinces the affections we do not reveal, as the fall leaves fall. Nigel ends the song with a promise for the future: “Oh yeah, you can count on me.”

The Weather Station & Jennifer Castle: Collaboration Session #3 (PoB-052)

Two of the greatest working songwriters and poetic voices in Canada have recorded a miraculous, magical pair of songs together. The Weather Station’s “I Tried to Wear the World (feat. Jennifer Castle)” and Jennifer Castle’s “Midas Touch (feat. The Weather Station),” two sides of the same tarnished gold coin of sorrowfully sweet sentiments, represent their first-ever studio collaboration and the third edition of the Polaris Collaboration Sessions.

Nathan Bowles: Plainly Mistaken (PoB-043)

Bowles extends his acclaimed banjo and percussion practice into the full-band realm for the first time, showcasing both delicate solo meditations and smoldering, swinging ensemble explorations featuring Casey Toll (Jake Xerxes Fussell, Mt. Moriah) on double bass and Rex McMurry (CAVE) on drums. As he considers the cycles of deceit and self-deception that shape both our personal and political lives, a mixed mood of melancholy and merriment permeates Bowles’s own compositions as well as the interpretive material.

Jennifer Castle: Angels of Death (PoB-041)

A sublime meditation on mortality and memory, ghosts and grief, Angels of Death casts a series of spells against forgetting and finality, in the form of mystic-minimalist country-soul torch songs about writing, time travel, and spectral visitations. Castle wrote and recorded this breathtaking follow-up to the acclaimed Pink City (2014) in a 19th century church near the shores of Lake Erie, where her family also lived and experienced a constellation of losses.

Mind Over Mirrors: Bellowing Sun (PoB-040)

A twelve-faceted sonic inquiry into celestial cycles and the illuminating nature of darkness, Bellowing Sun is the majestic culmination of Jaime Fennelly’s immersive explorations of the natural world’s sensory dimensions. Commissioned by the MCA Chicago for its world premiere performance, and recorded with John McEntire (Tortoise), it features Janet Beveridge Bean (Freakwater), Jim Becker (Iron and Wine), and Jon Mueller (Death Blues).

Nap Eyes: I’m Bad Now (PoB-033)

The acclaimed Canadians return with an ambitious, allusive third album that achieves a new sonic clarity, depth, and range to match the effortless melodies and extraordinary writing. It’s the band’s most transparent and personal set of songs to date, in which singer Nigel Chapman interrogates social, psychological, and spiritual milieus for clues about the elusive nature of knowledge.

Red River Dialect: Broken Stay Open Sky (PoB-039)

The London-based band (with Cornish roots) brings a windswept energy and daylight to a contemplative, gorgeously rendered suite of songs about inhabiting the landscape, and our bodies, in joy and pain alike. This is the band’s most ambitious and emotionally affecting work to date: atmospheric but deeply rooted, equally concerned with investigating the concrete and the cosmic, both quiet details of the everyday and looming matters of faith.