Michigan Songwriter Chris Bathgate Returns With 'Bruises'

After a half-decade away, Michigan songwriter Chris Bathgate returns today with "Bruises," to announce his sixth full-length album, The Significance of Peaches, for a May 13 release via Quite Scientific. Pre-order The Significance of Peaches here.

Discussing the single, which was produced by Daniel Zott (JR JR), and features backing vocals from fellow Michigan songwriter Samantha Cooper, Bathgate noted, "This song came from walking around downtown San Francisco on my commute. I was often surrounded by people - some doing very well and some whose circumstances were dire. This would be enough, but mix it with all the other issues in the world and it gave me one of those, 'what is wrong with us', head-shaking moments. We know where we are, we know where we are headed. What would I say to the world about it all if I could? What's the simplest way to say it?"

The Significance of Peaches finds Chris ruminating on time spent living in the National Forests of Michigan, and after a move to the West Coast, farms in Northern California. Time spent in San Francisco, where he would reconnect with the love of his life, and the mother of his children. An eventual return move to his home state. And the significance of that aforementioned stone fruit. Sonically the album leans heavily on the structural support of a parlor organ, with barely a cymbal in sight, and not a guitar to be found. Chris' haunted vocals perched atop it all.

Discussing this time, Bathgate stated, "Before I moved to California, I spent a summer in the Huron-Manistee National Forest. I was camping, parking my van in the woods, sometimes working as a carpenter. There are orchards on the westside of Michigan, and late that summer I ate every local Michigan peach I saw. I would give peaches to people I cared about, sometimes trying to express exactly what I meant by the gesture. Here, please have this-a focal point of this exact and singular sacred summer, a ripe local peach. It's been nice to be alive with you here, Carpe Diem, I love you. The interest followed me into a changing life, into the wonderful Co-ops of Northern California. Then to the Embarcadero Farmers market, while living in SF with the now mother of my children."

Over the course of a last decade, and five albums prior Bathgate has toured across the US and some of Europe, performed a NPR Tiny Desk Concert, had extensive airplay on the BBC, and received praise from outlets such as Paste, NPR Music, No Depression, All Music and The Independent (UK).

Listen to the new single here:

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