Last updated: 4 days ago
'Songs From The Annex' out Dec. 11 on Jugo + Rada Records
If Michigan is a mitten, and if reflexology charts hold any merit, Tom Hymn resides at the gallbladder—an organ associated with creativity and zest. He calls his Grand Rapids apartment “The Annex” and, thanks to a global pandemic, quarantine, and the fate of furlough, he presents to you his fifth full-length album, Songs From The Annex. The namesake is a nod to Leonard Cohen and the music is at times as well. Other themes and influences include Hindu monkey gods, Almodovarian sex scenes, neighborhood walks with Ram Dass recordings, ex-lovers, bleached hair, mallgrabbers and skate videos, the indomitable Jeff Mangum, and local and cosmic boons.
The catalyst for the new record was a local friend calling for songs written during the first weeks of lockdown to make a compilation of quarantine tunes. That’s how the album’s first track, “Sub Ek,” was born. Soon the rest of the songs were written and demo’d in the Annex, with the original vision to make a lo-fi GarageBand album to release on Bandcamp. This plan was foiled, however, when Arizona Austin left the desert to come to Michigan to once again help out with engineering/co-producing the project. Tom and Indiana-based label Jugo + Rada Records decided to team up for an epic collaboration to the scale of punk, grunge, and freak folk proportions.
-Tyler Dunning
If Michigan is a mitten, and if reflexology charts hold any merit, Tom Hymn resides at the gallbladder—an organ associated with creativity and zest. He calls his Grand Rapids apartment “The Annex” and, thanks to a global pandemic, quarantine, and the fate of furlough, he presents to you his fifth full-length album, Songs From The Annex. The namesake is a nod to Leonard Cohen and the music is at times as well. Other themes and influences include Hindu monkey gods, Almodovarian sex scenes, neighborhood walks with Ram Dass recordings, ex-lovers, bleached hair, mallgrabbers and skate videos, the indomitable Jeff Mangum, and local and cosmic boons.
The catalyst for the new record was a local friend calling for songs written during the first weeks of lockdown to make a compilation of quarantine tunes. That’s how the album’s first track, “Sub Ek,” was born. Soon the rest of the songs were written and demo’d in the Annex, with the original vision to make a lo-fi GarageBand album to release on Bandcamp. This plan was foiled, however, when Arizona Austin left the desert to come to Michigan to once again help out with engineering/co-producing the project. Tom and Indiana-based label Jugo + Rada Records decided to team up for an epic collaboration to the scale of punk, grunge, and freak folk proportions.
-Tyler Dunning
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