{"title":"Dear Life Records","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"mj-lenderman-3","title":"MJ Lenderman","description":"\u003cp\u003eDear Life Records is proud to present the physical reissue of the self titled debut of MJ Lenderman.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMJ Lenderman is a songwriter born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina. The anatomy of an MJ record might go something like this: warped pedal steels and skuzzed out guitar; a voice reminiscent of the high-lonesome warble of a choirboy; the keen observations and reflections of a front stoop philosopher. Songs snake their way from a lo-fi home recording to something glossier made with longtime friends at Asheville's Drop of Sun studios, but the recording setting doesn't seem to matter much - at its core, a Lenderman song rings true.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eMJ Lenderman\u003c\/i\u003e was recorded, mixed and mastered for digital in 2019 by Colin Miller in Asheville NC, and was self-released online to quiet but firm acclaim. Now available as a Double LP and remastered for vinyl by Heather Jones, it offers a glimpse into the formative steps of a style; focused and precise, yet expansive and rough around the edges, that remains consistent across MJ's catalogue to date.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLooking as firmly to the legacy of 90s slowcore as it does to the tenor of Magnolia Electric Co. and sound wall of Neil Young and Crazy Horse, these 9 songs clock in at just over an hour and offer warm, patient worlds of heavy colour that blow by breezily. These are songs that wrap mysterious and urgent feeling in layers of patience and clarity that unfold anew with each timeless listen.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dear Life Records","offers":[{"title":"2LP - Black","offer_id":50411274993995,"sku":"2166199","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/0644110492715_37fe4f3d_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726655345"},{"product_id":"ghost-of-your-guitar-solo-by","title":"Ghost of Your Guitar Solo","description":"\u003cp\u003eDiscover Ghost of Your Guitar Solo by MJ Lenderman on vinyl from Dear Life Records. A raw and gritty collection of songs blending country and punk influences, showcasing Lenderman's prolific songwriting process.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dear Life Records","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":51641668043083,"sku":"2240361","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/2240361.jpg?v=1744715647"},{"product_id":"diamond-grove","title":"Diamond Grove","description":"\u003cp\u003eWeirs is an experimental collective grown out of central North Carolina's music scene - one that is equal parts old-time and DIY noise. Non-hierarchical in form, past Weirs performances have included anywhere from two to twelve people. In September 2023, nine traveled up US-58 to pack into the living and dining rooms of the dairy farm main house, still in the family of band member and organizer Oliver Child-Lanning, whose relatives have been there for centuries. This Weirs lineup-neither definitive nor precious-includes Child-Lanning; Justin Morris and Libby Rodenbough (his collaborators in Sluice); Evan Morgan, Courtney Werner, and Mike DeVito of Magic Tuber Stringband; and stalwarts Andy McLeod, Alli Rogers, and Oriana Messer who played deep into those late-summer evenings. What resulted are the nine tracks of Diamond Grove, recorded with an ad hoc signal chain assembled from a greater-community's worth of borrowed gear.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Weirs project began as tape experiments on traditional tunes Child-Lanning made under the name Pluviôse in winter 2019. This evolved into the first Weirs record, Prepare to Meet God, which was self-released in July 2020 and was a collaboration between Child-Lanning and Morris during COVID. The strange conditions of that debut—a communal tradition of live songs recorded apart in isolation-are undone by Diamond Grove, a record rooted in the unrepeatable convergence of people, place, and time. On the new record, Weirs continue their search for how best to forward, uphold, and unshackle so-called \"traditional\" music. They are songcatchers, gathering tunes on the verge of obscure death. Their wild, centuries-spanning repertoire plays like an avant-call-the-tune session—a kind of Real Book for a scene fluent in porch jams, Big Blood, Amps for Christ, and Jean Ritchie. Weirs catch songs whose interpretive canon still feels ajar-open enough to stand next to but never above those who've sung them before. These aren't attempts at definitive versions. The recordings on Diamond Grove feel like visitations rather than revisions. And the question Weirs asks on this record is not how to simply continue the tradition of their forebears, but how traditional music could sound today.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor Weirs, the history of this tradition could be taken less from the folk revival than from musique concrète; less from pristine old master recordings than something like The Shadow Ring if they'd come from the evangelical South. \u003cem\u003eDiamond Grove\u003c\/em\u003e, in these ways, is history. It is a place. It is time. It is songcatching, liveness, tape manipulation. Like the low-head dam that the word weir implies, it is a defense against the current. It is a defense of regional lexicons against mass-produced vernaculars; a defense against the belief that we can simply return to a simpler time; a defense against the idea that folk music must remain \"pure\"; a defense against the claim that a dream of the future latent in lost histories is irretrievably lost. Against all that,\u003cem\u003e Diamond Grove\u003c\/em\u003e defends traditional music by making it sound like the complexity of today-because it knows that such music, and all the histories caught up in it, has a role to play in the days to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dear Life Records","offers":[{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":53223725859147,"sku":"R2641-1357","price":23.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":53223725891915,"sku":"R2641-9987","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/Weirs-DiamondGrove.jpg?v=1755784903"},{"product_id":"hopeful-woman","title":"Hopeful Woman","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNatalie Jane Hill’s new record, \u003cem\u003eHopeful Woman\u003c\/em\u003e, is composed of slender songs, life-sized, in which humans endeavor to reconcile themselves to wildernesses and cities; rearrange their rooms and open windows to be closer to the world outside and its choruses of frogs and crickets; attempt and fail to reach one another across a kitchen table; weather natural disaster. If something we might deign to call self-discovery emerges over the course of these narratives, it owes in no small part to the scale of their scenes, to the modesty of their ambitions, in which tumult and adaptation and growth are metabolized through a body’s gentle actions and reactions, its moments of quietude and observation and reflection. “Into the current of life I will fly, ” Hill sings on Oranges, a song that would serve her well as a mission statement. “Changing and loving and growing and trying. ”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cem\u003eHopeful Woman\u003c\/em\u003e was recorded live in two parts: first in Lockhart, Texas —she’s a native of the state—and then in Western North Carolina, where she now makes her home. She enlisted a small ensemble of collaborators whose spacious but focused arrangements hum with the nuance and delicacy that has attended the recordings of another thoughtful Texas songwriter, the great Edith Frost. Hill’s crackerjack multi-instrumentalist partner Mat Davidson in particular appears throughout with preternatural grace: attend to his aching pedal steel on “Never Left Me, ” or demurely pastoral-psychedelic flute that weaves through “Lucky to Be, ” or the stacked fiddles on “Blue is the Color of My Sun. ” All is in deft service to Hill’s magnificent voice, redolent of Hope Sandoval or Karen Dalton but more humane, more sturdy, closer to the earth. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIt’s only close to the earth where hope takes root and, we can only hope, grows—not in reckless, wild fecundity but in measured steps, one at a time, while the storm gathers, rips through, passes. “And I know through time we’ll give and we’ll let go, ” Hill sings. “And I know this time I’ll give and I’ll let go. ” Hers is a wise and humane hopefulness, built exquisitely to human scale. The same can be said of this record.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dear Life Records","offers":[{"title":"LP - Transparent Red","offer_id":55857398513995,"sku":"R2308-5139","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":55857398546763,"sku":"R2308-6187","price":23.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":55857398579531,"sku":"R2308-2735","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/2000x2000bb_d5978d85-e7ce-4d7b-879b-de01e297870e.jpg?v=1762542948"},{"product_id":"any-river","title":"Any River","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eA decade ago, three employees of JJ's Market and Cafe became Styrofoam Winos. Lou Turner, Trevor Nikrant, and Joe Kenkel bonded over their mutual adoration for Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, and dollar bin country records. They amplified each other's enthusiasm, freaking out over every new song they came across. After a friend moved and left behind a drum set, all three Winos learned to play the drums. Early experiments in group songwriting were born from jam sessions and erasure poetry, blacking out words in old books to generate new poems. They all sang lead and swapped instruments regularly. Seeing Michael Hurley for the first time left a lasting impression and provided the band with one of its creative north stars. Years later, Snock himself would send the Winos his blessing to release their cassette of covers of his songs. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eStyrofoam Winos have always gone with the flow, which makes \u003cem\u003eAny River \u003c\/em\u003ean apt title for their new album, the follow-up to 2024's Real Time. Their playful approach is bolstered by the chops of seasoned musicians who have performed many hundreds of concerts, both together and as touring members of Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band, MJ Lenderman and the Wind, and as solo artists. This is one of their key strengths that can't be overstated: they are extremely good musicians! When three talented people develop such a deep level of chemistry, the result is nothing short of majestic. Each song on Any River came out of jam sessions at Turner and Nikrant's home studio, and a shared Google doc of lyrics soon followed. They recorded in Louisville—their first album made outside of Nashville-with Roadhouse bandmate and Equipment Pointed Ankh mastermind Jim Marlowe. Marlowe's understated production kept the band's unique synergy on full display. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThis leads to another essential point about this band. They manage to strike a perfect balance between reverence and irreverence for the musical traditions they're working within. Their knowledge of the canon is scholarly, but such knowledge is always followed by a wink. No moment on the record encapsulates this more than the trumpet solo on 'New Friend'. It's a deft performance, but the way Kenkel dips down below the tonic before resolving the solo's final notes is hysterical. Performed live, he plays the solo note for note on a kazoo while playing the drums at the same time. This music si that of experienced shapeshifters, defying easy categorization while remaining instantly recognisable.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dear Life Records","offers":[{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":56895452610891,"sku":"R7594-7747","price":23.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":56895452643659,"sku":"R7594-2521","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/2000x2000bb_8f531395-afa0-41bf-9e78-a4c6db794e8a.jpg?v=1774623518"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/collections\/dear-life-records.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}