Spencer Cullum, pedal steel maestro and band leader, has announced that the final part of his Coin Collection trilogy will be released on the 27th of March via Full Time Hobby Records. And its title? “Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection 3″, of course. By all accounts, it was in his garden shed in Nashville, Tennessee, that Cullum found an escape from the noise of the world, from “the spew of hatred and vitriol that has come to soundtrack the present day”. It was here in a makeshift recording studio that the new album was born.
“There was a lot about reading news back home and reading news here that made me very frustrated,” says the British-born, Nashville-based singer, songwriter, and pedal steel savant (Angel Olsen, Kesha, Dolly Parton, Miranda Lambert, Caitlin Rose). Holding the constant cycle of bad news up to the light, Cullum tried to create a narrative beyond the violence and greed. Not all of the album is glaringly political in this way. However, most of it is topical, the album’s nine tracks acting as a kind of remedy for reality. “I’m trying to be very conscious of not being too political,” Cullum shares, “but there’s a big concern of how we are treating people and Earth.”
As a way to make sense of everything from the climate crisis to late-stage capitalism, the musician turned to the folklore of his native England, the occult-tinged tales of ancient relics and midnight rites, rather than in the extreme views that tend to warp his adopted home in the American South.
“I felt more settled in that,” he says of the folk narratives that have found their way into his music today. “I love reading about standing stones and old folk stories about how men would get enticed into the woods and murdered by some sort of witch. I love that, it’s brilliant.” It begins with ‘Rowan Tree’, the album’s opening track and first single. Through skittering strings and supple rhythms, Cullum’s trademark hush-a-bye voice spins a twisted folk tale in which a tree kills greedy men, pulling them in at the roots and having its way with them.
The video which you can see below – a hand-drawn stop-motion animation by artist Gaia Alari – opts for a fittingly surreal folk-art aesthetic. “The song evokes an old folk tale and its mysterious atmosphere, so I wanted to tell the story through interweaving morphings, characters, and symbols”, said Alari about the video. “I also focused on creating a clash between “masculine” and “feminine” in its Jungian definition, hinting at the broader topic of man versus nature. All together, I hope the visuals evoke feelings of magic, mystery, and a nuanced range of emotions that could complement the lyrics and music.”
Coin Collection 3, however, is not all witchcraft and whimsy, or even all doom and gloom. “There are songs about being happy with my life, living here in this garden with my wife and dogs and having this community helping us,” he shares. Collaborators included singer-songwriter Oisin Leech, who tracked his vocals in Ireland, while Allison De Groot recorded her banjo parts on an iPhone when backstage between shows.
“Everyone’s so busy, but I like the idea of everyone adding a part wherever they were in the noise of it all,” Cullum says. He describes the project as piecing together bits of paper, uniting the vocal stylings of Erin Rae and Annie Williams, the rhythms of Dominic Billett, and even the flute flourishes of Jim Hoke into one masterful oeuvre. Wherever the recordings came from, they were all brought together and mixed onto cassette tape.
The album can be pre-ordered here
Track listing:
1. Rowan Tree
2. Easy Street
3. Jackie Paints
4. Gavon’s Eve (ft. Allison de Groot)
5. Look at the Moon (ft. Erin Rae)
6. Old Paul Hill (ft. Annie Williams)
7. Don’t Go Downtown (ft. Oisin Leech)
8. Washed Upon the Shore (ft. Rich Ruth)
9. Music on the Hill
