Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter have announced the release their first new album since 2011’s “Marble Son” “Forever, I’ve Been Being Born” will be out on 28th November 2025 via Ideologic Organ in Europe/UK/Asia/South America and Southern Lord in North America and Australasia. The record will be issued on CD and vinyl with a digital download also available.
“Forever, I’ve Been Being Born” is a group of ten emotive songs from an open heart. In the making for ten years, the album centres around the power of Sykes’ transcendent voice, while guitarist and Whiskeytown alumnus Phil Wandscher’s playing on the songs features his classic and fractured tones. The album also features exquisite contributions from Marissa Nadler, who can be heard on the lead single, ’Gentle Chaperone’.
“This album is our attempt to create elegant folk and sometimes ragged, cosmic, heart rendered songs full of eulogies and laments. Our sound is still familiar enough, but unrecognisable at times—we’ve gotten older and wearier, the music more fragile” says Sykes.
The Seattle-based band, which burst into the world’s consciousness with their stunning debut “Reckless Burning” in 2002, had been on a recording hiatus after losing their rhythm section following the release of “Marble Son”. “Losing our rhythm section was heartbreaking,” Sykes reflects. “It sounds cliche, but we had to grieve that loss, and in doing so, we had to separate ourselves from making music for a while, because dare I say, music was painful at the time. It reminded us of what we’d lost. Bands are like family, and I’d lost my family. So yes, I had to give up music in order to fall in love with music again.” For the past three years Sykes has been lead vocalist in Dave Alvin-led The Third Mind.
You can pre-order “Forever, I’ve Been Being Born” via the Ideologic Organ Bandcamp page..
The lead single, ‘Gentle Chaperone’ has its own inspiration. Whilst her voice has already acted as a guiding light through dark times for others, for Sykes herself, that presence is felt in the form of a chaperone on this record. More specifically, Jesse’s childhood babysitter inspired a motif on the record, “She truly was the person who taught me love,” she muses, “When I think of the moment of death, I often think that it would just be going to her”.
