New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Middle Sattre, the Austin-based indie-folk octet led by musician/composer Hunter Prueger, are releasing their debut album Tendencies this Friday, February 9th, via Sad Tree Records.
The project has quickly become a vital part of their local music scene, known for their vivid and heartfelt narratives that speak to the queer experience. Taken along with the collective's willingness to deviate from conventional norms of songwriting, Middle Sattre subvert expectations of what a folk project can be.
To help bring all of the project's nuances into focus on the record, Middle Sattre had the album mixed by David Tolomei (Girlpool, Beach House) and mastered by renowned engineer Heba Kadry (Bjork, L'Rain, Sufjan Stevens).
Today, in anticipation of the release, Middle Sattre shared a music video for "Dallas," a sincere and cleverly written song that crescendos with electrifying guitar. Speaking to the song's backstory, Prueger offered: "Dallas is about an old friend who I had a hand in converting. He later came out to me, and I left the church. I'm not usually one for big guitar solos, but I felt like this one just said everything that I couldn't figure out how to say with words."
The music video consists of a series of fleeting hand-drawn images animated by Middle Sattre's own S. Wallace, who directed the work alongside Prueger. On the process, Wallace remarked: "Hunter came up with the idea for the video's overall pattern—little drawings appearing, moving around, and then disappearing. I had Hunter send me all the random footage he could find on his phone and spent a lot of time excavating my own archives, so it ended up being this patchwork of both of our memories.
Shared Austin memories, individual Utah and Iowa and Michigan and Tennessee memories. Ones that are serious and ones that are silly. All of it equally meaningless and meaningful. What it feels like when you already house so much grief and joy and life says, 'Good morning! Here's another tomorrow for you. Keep moving.'"
Tendencies is a raw, intimate account of queer coming-of-age that sees frontman Hunter Prueger confronting his internalized homophobia and shame leftover from growing up gay in the Mormon church and pivoting towards self-acceptance. At its heart, it is a collection of stories that are intensely personal in detail yet universal in their representation of the queer experience.
In "Sweet 16," Prueger meets a friend's dads and admits that while he thought he would feel proud, instead he is disgusted. He is overcome with guilt after piercing his ears on "Corrupted" - a practice that is forbidden for men in the church. But throughout the record, he sees a way forward. After years of suppressing his frustration, he finally allows himself to feel anger on "Seven Years Since the Fall," and towards the end of "Imperfect Hands" he finds solace in the arms of another man.
With a background as a noise artist, Prueger has a penchant for finding inventive ways to play instruments. This narrative of frustration and reconciliation is told through the rattle of acoustic guitars draped with chains and explosions of banjo strings struck with fidget spinners. Snares and velcro get repurposed as guitar accessories, and elsewhere instruments are time-stretched and granulated into barely recognizable forms, altogether creating a sound that is textural, prismatic, at times aggressive, and often devastatingly beautiful.
Middle Sattre originated as a solo home-recording project in Salt Lake City, UT using a cheap microphone and discarded instruments acquired from working at a middle school. Gradually, Prueger looped in collaborators from around the country, laying the groundwork for what would eventually become an eight-piece band. In early 2022, he moved to Austin, TX with S. Wallace (vocals, keyboard) and Mitch Stevens (guitar, banjo, piano). From there the band grew to include Jordan Walsh (prepared guitar, drums), Juniper Card (guitar, drums), Kai Jasmin (viola, guitar), Sophie Mathieu (cello), and James Tabata (bass).
Lyrically, their compositions are at once both mournful and hopeful, and Prueger's soft-spoken, almost whispery vocals have an ethereal intimacy that creates a sense of being let in on a long-guarded secret. In both intent and narrative, the band's work is composed of vulnerable introspections on the agonies of repression and the ecstasies of slipping loose from those bonds. Sonically, that abstract of breaking free from constraint carries over into the band's unconventional use of traditional instruments. Middle Sattre is rooted in folk traditions but is not bound by them, unshackled in both sound and story.
Middle Sattre will celebrate the release of Tendencies with a special hometown record release show on February 10th at Radio Cofee & Beer (South) with Some Say Leland and Brother Nielsen supporting. Tickets are available here. Stay tuned for additional tour dates to follow, including multiple performances at SXSW Music Festival in March.
