New York, NY (Top40 Charts) On November 13, Au Pair, a collaboration between Gary Louris of The Jayhawks and Django Haskins of The Old Ceremony, will release their debut album One-Armed Candy Bear via Sham/Thirty Tigers.
This week, Relix premiered "Waiting For The First Time," the second song to be released from the album.
"This was one of the first ones we wrote, and when we recorded it, the simple track with just acoustic guitars and vocals came together so completely that we didn't put it through any of the psych/noise treatments, just doubled the solo bit and that was basically it. This is one of my favorites from the album" says Haskins about the song.
Stereogum premiered the album's first single "In Every Window" and said it's a "bright, breezy pop song... its appeal is obvious and immediate."
Au Pair strikes a balance between classic songcraft and cheeky experimentation on their debut album, One-Armed Candy Bear. The core of the album consists of the duo singing and playing into a single microphone like a
Memphis Sun session. But then they take some strange turns: body percussion, feedback loops, avant guitar, Kraut rock touches, anything goes in the world of Au Pair. This openness was encouraged and enhanced by producer and secret weapon Brian Haran, who recorded the album at his studio in Durham, NC.
Gary and Django met in
Chicago in 2013 where they were performing as a part of a "Big Star's Third" concert, which celebrated the influential band's music with original drummer Jody Stephens, Mike Mills (REM) and many others. It was a fitting start to a musical friendship, as the Third record similarly takes catchy songs and throws them over the cliff into beautiful weirdness and existential dread. Gary and Django's first song, "King of the Valley," written in a hotel room in North Carolina, tells the story of a football player with a traumatic head injury. "Sullivan's Ghost" takes on the voice of brilliant but curmudgeonly
Chicago architect Louis Sullivan, while "One-Eyed Crier" unfolds like a lost Salinger story.
Au Pair began as a happy accident, developed into a laboratory of joyful experimentation, and now with One-Armed Candy Bear you can hear first-hand what happens when two vital songwriters take the odd way home.
Pre-order the album here: https://www.pledgemusic.com/aupair
