Michael Nau & The Mighty Thread

Less Than Positive 04:35

2.
Shadow On 04:16

3.
When 02:10

4.
What's A Loon 03:47

5.
Far The Far 03:43

6.
No Faraway Star 03:00

7.
Funny In Real Life 02:50

8.
On Ice 02:47

9.
Funny Wind 05:03

10.
Can't Take One 04:30

11.
Smudge 04:03

about

“There was a musical language that we created; something without a guiding pattern that you could really just jump into and see where things could go,” Maryland folk musician Michael Nau says of the process of recording his forthcoming third solo album, Michael Nau & The Mighty Thread. He’s wildly poetic, especially when recounting his dedication to music, and the work that led to this particular collection of delicately passionate songs. “These things became the vehicle by which we traveled, giving us reason to spend most of our lives in a van of uncertainty.”

Michael Nau & The Mighty Thread is the follow up to 2016’s Mowing — the first record he released under his own name, after fronting psych folk projects Page France and Cotton Jones — June 2017’s Some Twist, and its extension, The Load EP. The sprawling new album was recorded in Benny Yurco’s one-bedroom apartment in downtown Burlington, Vermont. Nau and his collaborators had a cool little set up going in Yurco’s spot — drums and bass took over the bedroom, the guitar amp in the bathroom, Nau’s vocals and piano in the living room, and a vibraphone in the kitchen. It’s the first time one of Nau’s records happened all in one place, and it feels most like a band record than ever before, he says; Nau and this particular group of musicians held it down together as a true team, which is why Nau named the record in their honor. Nothing more was added to it than what was recorded by Nau and the band in Yurco’s apartment. It didn’t feel like the right thing to do to mess with it post-facto, he adds. “It’s a documented live performance. It happened the way it happened, and that’s how it is.”