New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Saintseneca has announced a new album titled Pillar of Na, with its glistening lead single, "Frostbiter." NPR, who premiered the song on the All Songs Considered blog, is saying "For Saintseneca, fatalistic gloom blends seamlessly with a kind of playful sprightliness: Zac Little's songs often simmer in a sad swirl of death and esoterica, but his deadpan ruminations are buoyed by the sounds of exotic instruments, candy-colored pop hooks and many points in between."
Saintseneca's Zac
Little says "I think of this song as a big tree trunk in the woods where people carve their messages - initials, jokes, 'I love you' hearts... It is a work of accumulation. A little space absorbing traces of its environment over time. Every mark corresponds to a different story. Some of them are mine. Some belong to others, yet feel all too familiar."
Pillar of Na is available for pre-order now and due out 8/31 via ANTI- Records.
Additionally, Saintseneca have also announced their first headline tour in 3 years in support of Pillar of Na. All dates below.
TOUR DATES:
8/25 - Cincinnati, OH @ beWILDerfest
8/31 - Columbus, OH @ Wexner Center for the Arts
9/4 - Pittsburgh, PA @
Spirit Lodge
9/5 - Boston, MA @ Brighton
Music Hall
9/6 - New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
9/7 - Philadelphia, PA @ PhilaMOCA
9/8 - Richmond, VA @ The Camel
9/9 - Washington, DC @
Black Cat (Backstage)
9/11 - Durham, NC @ The Pinhook
9/12 - Atlanta, GA @ Drunken Unicorn
9/13 - Tampa, FL @ Crowbar
9/14 - Tallahassee, FL @ The Wilbury
9/15 - New Orleans, LA @ Gasa Gasa
9/17 - Austin, TX @ Barracuda
9/18 - Ft. Worth, TX @ Main at South Side
9/19 - Oklahoma City, OK @ Opolis
9/20 - Lawrence, KS @ Bottleneck
9/21 - St. Louis @ Off-Broadway
9/22 - Davenport, IA @ Village Theatre
9/23 - Indianapolis, IN @ Hollar on the Hill Festival
9/24 - Lexington, KY @ The Burl
10/9 - Cleveland, OH @ Mahall's
10/10 - Toronto, ONT @ Drake
10/11 - Ferndale, MI @ Loving Touch
10/12 - Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall
10/14 - Madison, WI @ High Noon
10/15 - Minneapolis, MN @ 7th Street Entry
10/18 - Boise, ID @ Funky Taco
10/19 - Seattle, WA @ Sunset Tavern
10/20 - Portland, OR @ Doug Fir Lounge
10/22 - San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop
10/23 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo
10/24 - San Diego, CA @ The Casbah
10/25 - Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar
10/27 - Denver, CO @ Larimer Lounge
ABOUT SAINTSENECA:
Saintseneca's Zac
Little has been thinking a lot about memory. Not necessarily his memories, though they creep in often, too. Rather, he mulls over the idea of memory itself: its resilience, its haziness, how it slips away as we try to hang on, the way it resurfaces despite our best efforts to forget.
Memory is the common thread running throughout the Columbus folk-punk band's fourth album, Pillar of Na, arriving in August 31st via ANTI- Records. Following 2015's critically lauded Such Things, the new album's name is rooted in remembrance, referencing the
Genesis story of Lot's wife who looks back at a burning Sodom after God instructs her not to. She looks back, and God turns her into a pillar of salt. "Na," meanwhile, is the chemical symbol for sodium. "Nah" is a passive refusal and the universal song word. It means nothing and stands for nothing. It is "as it is."
Like Lot's wife,
Little cannot help but revisit where-and how-he grew up. Raised in church in southeastern Appalachian Ohio, he took up preaching when he was still a teenager, sometimes in small country settings and other times to congregations of thousands. But these days he's more interested in listening. And questioning.
Musically, Pillar of Na is Saintseneca's most ambitious album to date, with
Little aiming to incorporate genre elements he'd rarely heard in folk. "I wanted to use the idiom of folk-rock, or whatever you want to call it, and to try to do something that had never been done before,"
Little explains. "To reach way back, echoing ancient folk melodies, tie that into punk rock, and then push it into the future. I told Mike Mogis I wanted Violent Femmes meets the new Blade Runner soundtrack. I'm looking for the intersection between
Kendrick Lamar and The Fairport Convention."
