On September 26, Animal, Surrender! will release their new album A Boot for Every Bane on Ernest Jenning Record Co. (pre-order). Today the band is excited to share the latest pre-release single from the upcoming release, “Misswanderer,” which is available now on all streaming platforms. The track follows lead single “Poinciana” and offers another glimpse into the album’s expansive sound.
This song is an ode to folks who against their better judgment follow an idea, impulse, obsession, or compulsion off the trail and deep into the bush, finding themselves lost, in a state they were their whole life warned against; a personal hell or a place of wonder and openness.
Curt’s pipe organ enters with great footfalls and we’re on our way. The organ moves through the landscape enveloping the armature of the bass. Rob’s drumming dances throughout; a gentle propulsive force.
The pipe organ is not a typical keyboard instrument. It’s driven by the massive godlike breath of the wind chest. It’s a shortcut to the celestial. The sacred is baked in. When Rob and I arrived at the Church in Richmond this was the first song we played with Curt. As the organ colored the air around the bass, the 32 foot tall pipes producing pitches a full two octaves below the bass guitar from deep behind the console, I burst into tears as we hit the chorus together. I’m really thrilled with how we were able to preserve that sub-harmonic material in the final mix. Kudos to Mitch Rakin for his great work there.
Animal, Surrender! is also announcing fall tour dates in support of A Boot for Every Bane. The tour will include shows in Jersey City, Baltimore, Brooklyn, Durham, and a record release show on October 1 at Cassette in Queens. Upcoming shows are listed below and tickets are on sale now.
ack in 2023, bassist Peter Kerlin (Sunwatchers, Chris Forsyth Solar Motel Band, Bent Arcana, Everloving) and drummer Rob Smith (Gray/Smith, Rhyton, Pigeons) ritualistically burnt their passports, ate the ashes, and began conspiring together under the guise of Animal, Surrender!
Kerlin’s spidery and melodious 8-string electric bass pushes the expected language of that instrument into terrain more often inhabited by lutes or pianos, and begs to interweave with a drummer like Smith, who slyly punctuates, hisses, and propels against the grain. The duo’s often wordless music is spun from threads of lost folksongs and polyrhythms into hypnotic, latticework compositions whose melodies and beats shift like cat’s-cradles strung between their constantly moving hands.
Their eponymous debut on Ernest Jennings Record Co. in 2024 found haunting covers of Nick Drake and Mike Wexler lurking amongst a tangle of lean, progressive originals, all crafted with the terse economy of post-rock, but reflecting a kaleidoscopic, pastoral vision in its eyes.
Their forthcoming album, A Boot for Every Bane builds upon the incantatory language of the first while inviting the talents and mercurial instincts of pipe organist Curt Sydnor (Greg Saunier, Yonatan Gat, Peni Candra Rini) into the magick circle.
From within historic St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, where Poe’s mother sleeps eternal and Patrick Henry once challenged the young nation to give him liberty or give him death, Sydnor breathes charged air from 120 year-old pipes to help the group coax troubled spirits from the American dirt for a spiritual reckoning.
With new songs like “Misswanderer” and “Ruinous Realm,” Kerlin’s mesmerizing bass-lines lure us further down the group’s sonic left-hand path into thickets of compound rhythm and organ swells, where the trio also resurrects and rewilds two old familiar American standards: the seductive and sub-tropical “Poinciana” made famous by Ahmad Jamal’s trio, and the untraceable, frontier river-song “Shenandoah,” known from deep renditions by Belafonte, Dylan, and Tony Rice to name but a few.
Yet when an animal catches its own distorted reflection in the rolling river, what is left to do but surrender to the song?
Animal, Surrender! Tour Dates:
September 26 – Westfield, MA @ Hutgi’s with Wendy Eisenberg / Ryan Sawyer Duo
September 27 – Brattleboro, VT @ Epsilon Spires
September 28 – Jersey City, NJ @ WFMU Monty Hall
September 30 – Kingston, NY @ Tubby’s
October 1 – Queens, NY @ Cassette with Wendy Eisenberg / Ryan Sawyer Duo + Domestic Drafts
(RECORD RELEASE SHOW!)
October 2 – Baltimore, MD @ Normals with Albert & Christian
October 3 – Durham, NC @ Feast V
October 4 – Charlottesville, VA @ Visible Records
October 18 – Brooklyn, NY @ Hart Bar
Thoughts Words Action 