Photo by Brad Bunyea.
After announcing his forthcoming album Plainly Mistaken and premiering the initial single “The Road Reversed” through NPR Music, Nathan is now sharing his ethereal cover of the 1976 Julie Tippetts song “Now If You Remember” via Stereogum, who dub Nathan “a stalwart of the new Americana resurgence.” Listen to this “spooky lullaby” below.
PRE-ORDER NATHAN BOWLES‘ PLAINLY MISTAKEN:
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Plainly Mistaken, the playfully subversive fourth solo album by Durham, North Carolina multi-instrumentalist Nathan Bowles, begins with a lullaby written by a child for an adult. The seven year-old Jessica Constable composed “Now If You Remember”—the titular lyric continues, precociously, “we were talking about God and you”—for English singer Julie Tippetts’s 1976 album Sunset Glow. Bowles’s ethereal rendering represents a rather radical departure from his previous recordings; his placidly plaintive singing has been stripped of its otherwise genial, ursine gruffness, and the brief song floats by on the sedative ebb tide of banjo and pianos both acoustic and electric. Bowles shares his thought on the song:
“This is a song that bewitched me from the first time I heard it — something about the 2nd person perspective, the weirdly specific but center-less vocals, the water-wheel turning of the cyclical piano and guitar. It’s a song both comforting and vaguely portentous. Tippetts’ vocals are inimitable, so I tried to honor instead the song’s spirit, something both somnambulant and vaguely portentous, like falling asleep by a dying campfire.”
To celebrate the release of Plainly Mistaken, Nathan’s first two PoB albums—Nansemond and Whole & Cloven—are now both on sale for 20% off when you use coupon code MISTAKEN during checkout on our website through October 5.
