Canadian folk/roots duo Kacy & Clayton have announced details of a new album ‘Carrying On’ which is due out via New West Records on 4th October 2019. The 10-song album has been produced by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and recorded by Tom Schick at The Loft, Wilco’s recording studio and rehearsal space in Chicago. ‘Carrying On’ follows the international acclaim for the Canadian cousins Kacy Anderson and Clayton Linthicum’s previous records ‘Strange Country’ (which Q magazine called “A beautiful album that nudges a classic past into a brave future”) and 2017’s ‘The Siren’s Song’ (described by Uncut as “Ageless and beguiling. A classic record for this or any other time.” and us here at AUK too: “the pair demonstrate a maturity in songwriting that belies their relatively tender years.”)
Kacy & Clayton have already shared the title track to the album, as well as the video for ‘The Forty-Ninth Parallel’ which you can watch below. Kacy describes it in detail: “‘The Forty-Ninth Parallel’ video was filmed in Regina, Saskatchewan, and it shouldn’t be hard to tell. Filmmaking treasure, Sunny Adams, has created somewhat of a young woman’s ‘Experience Regina’ demonstration video. There are off-putting moments throughout involving a Bud Light Lime hat, a very faint farmer’s tan, and a couple of total Sasky party machines. The song itself is a Gen Z’s attempt at a fable. The moral is skewed but there still is one if you’re looking. Watching a truck rip donuts to our song has been an unexpected highlight of my life and I hope others may enjoy it too.”
The music Kacy & Clayton make is inextricable from where they grew up. The second cousins sing about the kind of people you’d find in Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan (population very few). The hills, barns, and remoteness of the area are in these songs, with a bittersweet acknowledgement that this music has taken them far from home. Their sound is equal parts homespun, coming from a family and community where playing music is an ever-present part of social gatherings, and the rare country, blues, and English folk-rock they obsess over and collect. It’s an arresting amalgamation of psychedelic folk, English folk revival and the ancestral music of Southern Appalachia. For the latest record, Clayton cites as influences: Bobbie Gentry’s DeltaSweete, Hoyt Axton’s My Griffin Is Gone, Cajun fiddle music, and the steel guitar of Ralph Mooney, who played on many of the records that defined the Bakersfield country music scene of the 1950s. Sixties psych has also woven its way into these new songs; Kacy enjoys telling people that they live 250km from the mental hospital that coined the term “psychedelic.”
Jeff Tweedy said of working on the new record: “When I first heard Kacy and Clayton, I was struck by how much detail and nuance they had absorbed from what sounded like a large swath of my record collection. When I told them that they were as good as the artists they were drawing from, I’m not sure they believed me. On this record I don’t hear those influences as much as I hear them taking the things they love so intimately and telling their own story. I think they’re a truly great band.”
