New York, NY (Top40 Charts) The Brooklyn-based band San Fermin returns with "Arms," their first release of new music this year. The song finds vocalist Allen Tate surrendering to the helplessness of falling in love, from the beginning to the end of a relationship. The track also marks Tate's foray as producer on a full length project for the band. The melancholic ballad, written by bandleader Ellis Ludwig-Leone, finds the octet stripping away their signature complex arrangements and dynamic shifts and leaning into some of its most emotionally vulnerable and melodic songwriting to date.
Ludwig-Leone explains: "This song started with the chorus. I was thinking about how helpless- and hopeless - it feels to fall for someone who everyone in the world seems to love. You know you'll never be that important to them, because they're used to being loved by everybody. But you can't help it, and it hurts all the more."
"Arms" follows a pair of EPs the band released over the last two years and their 2020 LP The Cormorant, via their own label Better Company. Founded by Ludwig-Leone and Tate during the pandemic, the label has been dedicated to creating a wide-ranging community of musicians with an emphasis on collaboration, and has cultivated an eclectic roster with releases from artists like
Daisy the Great, Lilts (the new project from John Ross of Wild Pink) and Attacca Quartet.
Since the band's beginnings in 2013, San Fermin's ambitious scope has taken them across a variety of genres, attracting an eclectic group of collaborators that reflect Ludwig-Leone's own wide-ranging musical background.
Prominent indie musicians (Wye Oak, The Districts), notable featured vocalists (Lucius, Samia), contemporary classical luminaries (Nico Muhly, Attacca Quartet), and folk artists (Sam Amidon) have lent their efforts to the breadth of San Fermin's studio albums, belying Ludwig-Leone's restless musical imagination and desire for constant reinvention and collaboration.
Over the decade since their inception, the band has performed on stages from NPR's Tiny Desk to major festivals such as Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits, and has toured with
alt-J and Courtney Barnett, among others. The New Yorker's Jia Tolentino has lauded their "knack for simultaneously expressing beauty and crisis," while Rolling Stone has called them "masters of highbrow chamber pop."
Since the band's last full length album, bandleader Ludwig-Leone has stayed busy, premiering his dance-opera The Night Falls earlier this year. With lyrics by Ludwig-Leone and Pulitzer finalist
Karen Russell, and direction and choreography by Troy Schumacher (New York City Ballet), The Night Falls was praised for Ludwig-Leone's "ingenious, gorgeous score" by The New Yorker and was featured in a full page spread in The New York Times.
San Fermin is Ellis Ludwig-Leone (bandleader, songwriter), Allen Tate (vocalist, producer), Claire Wellin (vocalist), Akira Ishiguro (guitar), John
Brandon (trumpet), Stephen Chen (saxophone), Tyler McDiarmid (guitar), and Griffin Brown (drums).
