Life, And Another

Description

On 'Life, and Another', Mega Bog (Erin Birgy's performing moniker) tends a luscious garden filled with plants that the casual passerby might mistakenly perceive as alien but which are in fact very much of this Earth. Departing from the damp nursery of the previous record, 2019’s ‘Dolphine’, Mega Bog's new album takes us back to our home planet, to a parched desert valley where its fourteen songs were written and scattered like stones in the landscape. When cohabiting with 'Life, and Another’s' co-producer, engineer, and percussionist James Krivchenia (Big Thief) in a small shack near the Rio Grande off NM State Route 68, Erin often found herself alone due to their differing touring schedules. During these quiet times, Erin felt a complete loss of self in the midst of this expanse. Frequently thinking about death in the middle of nowhere opened up a familiar black hole of unsettling projections, and any desire to find freedom or stay positive continued to fold in on self-destructive thoughts and fear. 'Life, and Another' stages a semi-fictional drama in the theater of her own interior, with scenes of collective nostalgia at the bowling alley, disagreements over a distended memory outside the bar, and solitary walks on the patio. Recorded across several sessions in various studios, 'Life, and Another' exists thanks to the instrumental contributions of Aaron Otheim, Zach Burba of iji, Will Segerstrom, Matt Bachmann, Andrew Dorset of Lake, James Krivchenia of Big Thief, Meg Duffy of Hand Habits, Jade Tcimpidis, Alex Liebman, and co-engineers Geoff Treager and Phil Hartunian. Listeners now know they can trust Mega Bog to continually lead them into deeper, wilder territories of spiritual pop. Piano glissandos, haunting psychedelic choirs, and tequila-inspired improvisations crawl across a dreamlike rock and roll landscape, before fading to make way for invocations of quiet clarity and organic instrumental passages. This is how the record takes its form as a collection of epic, picaresque, and non-anthropomorphic stories. Imagine if Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Wim Wenders’ Until The End Of The World, and Bucky Fuller and June Jordan’s speculative architectural re-envisioning of New York City were unheard episodes of The Canterbury Tales narrating an imaginative and necessary life on the planet. Mega Bog engraves her chapter there, transforming the brutal heaviness of the world into a collective struggle to live.