Following their acclaimed 2020 debut The Quickening, renowned drummer Jim White and acclaimed guitarist Marisa Anderson announce elemental new album Swallowtail. Expanding on both artists’ impressive body of work, both as two of the most in-demand collaborators in contemporary music, and their expansive solo endeavours, Swallowtail finds White and Anderson completely immersed in the moment, each attuned to the other fluidly moving as wind and water.
Alongside the album announcement, White and Anderson share new single “Bitterroot Valley Suite I: Water.” The first of three movements in the longer-form suite, the track flows with the steady momentum of a rolling river. The duo’s delicate interlocking instrumentation exists in a constant state of change and transformation, Anderson’s fluid guitar lines plumbing the depths or cresting the surface as sparkling constellations of reflected sunlight, while White’s rumbling polyrhythms push ever onwards, carving the shape of the landscape as they twist and turn.
Swallowtail was recorded in the Australian coastal town of Point Lonsdale, Victoria with engineer Nick Huggins (Resting Bell Studio). White was coming off a month of international touring and Anderson traveled to Australia for the duo’s first few performances, the remote setting and calm provided the ideal backdrop. “It was a big change of vibe and scenery,” says Anderson, “to be out of the city and on the coast with no distraction and to be working with an engineer (and avid surfer) who is attuned to the cycles of tides and sunrises and sunsets and ocean rhythms. I think all of that got into the music as we were making it.”
The coastal cadence is evident in Swallowtail’s more gradual temporal shifts. Movements ebb and flow, in an undulating constant motion whose dynamic flourishes closely resembles their adaptive live performances. “When we play live we don’t stop, there are no breaks in between ‘songs’,” notes Anderson, “we segue naturally between movements and ideas. Sometimes we are together, and sometimes we are apart, sometimes the segues become the pieces.” The natural development of the duo’s own singular meter, this early in their collaboration, is nothing short of revelatory.
Jim White and Marisa Anderson will be touring North America this spring around the release of Swallowtail, including a string of co-headline dates with fellow folk innovator Myriam Gendron. Full list of dates below.
