Laysongs

Description

NONESUCH RECORDS UNVEILS THE TRUE FIRST SOLO ALBUM BY CHRIS THILE, 'LAYSONGS': JUST HIM, HIS VOICE, HIS MANDOLIN, AROUND 6 NEW RECORDINGS INCLUDING THREE COVERS, ALL CONTEXTUALIZING AND JOKING WITH THE IDEA OF SPIRITUALITY. Nonesuch Records releases Laysongs by mandolinist, singer, and songwriter Chris Thile. The album is his first truly solo album: just Thile, his voice, and his mandolin, on new recordings of six original songs and three covers, which contextualize and joke with his ideas on spirituality. Recorded in a repurposed church in upstate New York during the pandemic, the centerpiece of Laysongs is the "Salt (in the Wounds) of the Earth" in three parts, inspired by The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. The album also includes a song that Thile wrote about Dionysus; a performance of the fourth movement of Béla Bartók's Solo Violin Sonata; "God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot" based on Buffy Sainte-Marie's adaptation of a poem by Leonard Cohen; a cover of bluegrass legend Hazel Dickens' "Won't You Come and Sing for Me"; and an original instrumental inspired by J.S. Bach's Prelude from the Partita for Solo Violin in E Major. He is giving personal performances in the U.S. this spring and is also continuing his popular online masterclass series on Sunday afternoons, Music Is Life Is Music. Thile, who grew up in a Christian family, explains the inspiration for Laysongs, stemming from a backstage conversation with Nonesuch's emeritus president, Bob Hurwitz, who told him: "You should make a record on the theme of God, it's all your work." "It's an obsession of my life, even post-Christian, what the impact of this kind of devotion to any organized religion is. When the world went into COVID lockdown in the spring of 2020 and the public radio show Thile had hosted, Live from Here, ended its run, he finally had time to seriously reflect on this idea. Once again, Hurwitz gave a nudge, encouraging him to make a "snapshot" of his pandemic experience. Thile's wife, accomplished actress Claire Coffee, was a co-producer of Laysongs: "She has an incredible sense of taste and narrative intuition. She was able to help me weave together the original and non-original material." During the summer of 2020, the family was temporarily living in Hudson, New York, where they found a recording studio, Future-Past, in an old church. "I went there to check out the space and immediately felt at home," Thile recalls. "I loved the amount of sound around the sound. I had two sound collaborators on this record: the formidable engineer Jody Elff and this church. Thile realized - and illustrates in these songs - that his greatest spiritual nourishment comes from communion with others. "I craved that thing more than ever - singing with people, making music with people, but especially that kind of very selfless music that happens in church. At its best, you don't think about yourself or even the people you're making music with. You all just do it together and it's about something else. It's really very beautiful. And that's perhaps the only thing I miss about organized religion."