New York, NY (Top40 Charts) The Lumineers' co-founder, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Jeremiah Fraites will release his anticipated solo debut album Piano Piano later this month on January 22nd. Today, she shared a new single from the record called "Chilly," a spare, meditative track that basks in the resonance of tolling piano chords and embodies the feeling of taking a deep, calming breath.
Fraites spoke with American Songwriter about the new song and elaborated on the intentional spaciousness, stating "I've always been attracted to music when I hear big spaces. The composer John Cage, who I think is a genius, talked about this idea of, 'Don't interpret space as a negative.' What I took away from that quote was, don't interpret [silence] as, 'Well, you didn't know what to write; you didn't know what to put in that space.' It's more, think of it as an intentional positive void."
He continued, "It reminds me of the epitome of minimalism, the epitome of really trying to find a simple idea and moving and expanding and letting it evolve very slowly. I think honestly it's my favorite track on the album currently."
"Chilly" follows the release of previous singles "Tokyo," "Maggie," "Possessed," and "An Air That Kills." Fraites teamed up with acclaimed videographer/marine biologist Paul Nicklen and SeaLegacy for a powerful video set to "Maggie," featuring stunning footage of Alaska's Bristol Bay, meant to draw attention to the controversial Pebble Mine, which has since been successfully blocked by the Army Corps of Engineers. The accompanying video for "An Air That Kills" shows footage captured by the award-winning cinematographer Louie Schwartzberg, the world's leading pioneer in high-end time-lapse and macro cinematography, filmed in Hokkaido, Japan, Big Sur, California, New Zealand, Iceland, and Tahiti.
In partnership with Calm, Fraites released two other new songs exclusively through the meditation app titled "Felt" and "Pluck." He also worked with the British music technology company Spitfire Audio for an Originals program called "Firewood Piano." The audio program is based on the eccentric upright piano that Fraites primarily used to record Piano Piano, nicknamed "Firewood" after his piano tuner's subjectively frank assessment of the instrument's quality.
Releasing through Dualtone Records (an Entertainment One Company) in the U.S. and Canada and Mercury KX for the rest of the world, Piano Piano is a collection of gorgeous, intimate piano-centric instrumental songs that Fraites has been working on for the better part of a decade. The profoundly revealing and emotionally direct songs capture Fraites' reflective moments from his Denver home. His songwriting reaches into deeply personal spaces with moving grace and stark elegance, retaining the folk-inspired melodicism so familiar from his work in The Lumineers, transported into a more classically sophisticated setting. In addition to piano, Fraites plays nearly every instrument on the album, including guitar, drums, synths, and programming. It was co-produced and engineered by
David Baron (Jade Bird, Vance Joy, Shawn Mendes) and features other collaborators such as The Lumineers' violinist
Lauren Jacobson, cellists Rubin Kodheli and Alex Waterman, and more.
