Angela Autumn Releases BELIEVER Album via Gar Hole Records
The album has received early acclaim from major music publications including Rolling Stone and Pitchfork.
Appalachian-born and Nashville-based musician Angela Autumn has released her second album, Believer, via Gar Hole Records. The album has received early praise from outlets including Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, The Needle Drop, Stereogum, UPROXX, Brooklyn Vegan, The Line of Best Fit and Exclaim!.
Angela Autumn says of the album: 'I made this record in the wake of a breakup. It was a dark time, but my music helped me to believe in a brighter future. Since finishing 'Believer,' I've flown to California for the first time, driven through the mountains in blizzards, and watched my friends scatter over the web of snowflakes in strange towns. I've stood out like a sore thumb in gas stations from coast to coast, with fires flaring in the distance. When making this record, I prayed for the memories I have inside of me now. Now that I'm flourishing, I am thankful for the person who broke my heart by leaving. Without their exit, I would not have been able to dedicate myself to the album 'Believer.''
Nicknamed 'The Rose of Appalachia,' a nod to the Allegheny roots and clawhammer banjo skills that helped her blossom into a critically-beloved solo artist, Angela Autumn has always been drawn to the mountains. Raised along the range of western Pennsylvania, she channels that landscape in her voice, funneling the timeless influence of mountain streams and rolling foothills into her genre-bending folksongs. With her second album, Believer, Angela Autumn proves she's every bit as interested in the modern age as tradition. She explains, 'I wanted to merge different aspects of myself. A lot of my friends are dancers, strippers, and body workers, and I like making music they can move their body to. With Believer, I wanted to make something with more attitude.'
The result is a musical Melting Pot of a record, blending the mountain music of Autumn's past with the hybridized sounds — indie, psychedelia, pop, and gothic country — of her present. Written in the great outdoors (the woods of Tennessee, a rural treehouse in Asheville, at a friend's warehouse in Chattanooga) and made with multi-instrumentalist and producer Baerd (Isaiah Beard), Believer showcases the other flowers in her garden, capturing Autumn in full bloom.
Angela Autumn is fresh off of support tours with the likes of Bonny Light Horseman and Langhorne Slim, and after being awarded the SXSW Developing Artist Grulke Prize, which in past years has gone to the likes of Leon Bridges, HAIM, Anderson .Paak and Future Islands. She will be touring later this year through North America, Europe and the UK.
The album follows Autumn's full-length debut, Frontiers Woman, and the 2023 EP Cowboy Jack Clementine. To find the attitude she wanted for Believer, she headed back to the great outdoors, spending time in the Tennessee woods, booking a weekend in a rural treehouse outside of Asheville, and staying at a friend's warehouse in Chattanooga, sleeping on the concrete floor at night and writing music during the day.
'I like to put myself in extreme situations in order to write,' she explains. 'That's how I wrote songs like 'Jesus Heist' and 'In the South': by leaving everything behind and going into nature. Without the earth, I probably wouldn't have any music.'
Back in her adopted hometown of Nashville, Autumn reunited with Isaiah Beard, the multi-instrumentalist and producer known as Baerd. The two had already worked together on 'Electric Lizard,' a viral hit that helped transform Angela Autumn from an old-world folksinger into a boundary-blurring, multi-genre musician back in 2023. With its sonic swirl of indie textures and abstract Americana, 'Electric Lizard' served as a harbinger of new songs to come.
'Isaiah isn't a traditionalist at all,' says Autumn, who chose to include 'Electric Lizard' on Believer. 'He's someone who loves pop and folk, so we both bring different things to the table. That's what makes the collaboration so great.'
Working with musicians like drummer Ross McReynolds, the two spent an afternoon at the Club Roar recording studio, capturing more than half of Believer's songs in a matter of hours. After that initial session, they spent weeks working on overdubs, adding eclectic textures like fiddle, cello, keyboards, strings, and billowing clouds of reverb. Autumn had never spent that much time fine-tuning her albums before, and she made sure to keep things fun.
'We were just playing around and goofing off,' she remembers. 'I doubled a lot of my vocals to accentuate certain things that I was saying, and Isaiah would sometimes stack six different guitar parts on the same song. It was an experiment in having fun and not taking ourselves too seriously.'
These songs evoke the canyons and valleys of northern Appalachia, but they're studio creations that mix organic performances with rich layers of sound. With songs that tackle themes like self-reflection, imagination, and nature's ability to heal, Believer is caught halfway between nature and the landscapes created in the mind.
Tracklist
Heavy Tobacco Millionaire
Money In The South
I Don't Think About You At All
Bleach Bugs
Garbage Jesus
Heist
My Alchemy
Tour Dates
Oct 3 - Leipzig, DE - UT Connewitz ^
Oct 4 - Leipzig, DE - UT Connewitz ^
Oct 5 - Prague, CZ - MeetFactory ^
Oct 7 - Krakow, PL - Hype Park ^
Oct 8 - Warsaw, PL - Progresja ^
Oct 9 - Poznan, PL - 2Progi ^
Oct 11 - Copenhagen, DK - Pumpehuset ^
Oct 12 - Hamburg, DE - Grosse Freiheit 36 ^
Oct 13 - Bremen, DE - Modernes ^
Oct 15 - Berlin, DE - Metropol ^
Oct 16 - Berlin, DE - Metropol ^
Oct 18 - Munich, DE - Muffathalle ^
Oct 19 - Innsbruck, AU - Treibhaus ^
Oct 20 - Vienna, AU - Arena ^
Oct 22 - Salzburg, AU - Rockhouse ^
Oct 23 - Budapest, HU - A38 Ship ^
Oct 24 - Zagreb, HR - Mocvara Club ^
Oct 25 - Zurich, CH - Kaufleuten ^
Oct 27 - Milan, IT - Magazzini Generali ^
Oct 28 - Rome, IT - Monk ^
Oct 29 - Bologna, IT - Locomotiv Club ^
Oct 31 - Lyon, FR - Transbordeur Club ^
Nov 1 - Frankfurt, DE - Zoom ^
Nov 2 - Esch-sur-Alzette, LU - Rockhal ^
Nov 4 - Amsterdam, NL - Paradiso ^
Nov 5 - Den Haag, NL - Paard ^
Nov 6 - Nijmegen, NL - Doornroosje ^
Nov 8 - Zwolle, NL - Hedon ^
Nov 9 - Brussels, BE - Cirque Royal ^
Nov 10 - Paris, FR - Elysée Montmartre ^
Nov 12 - Manchester, UK - Academy 2 ^
Nov 13 - Bristol, UK - Electric ^
Nov 14 - London, UK - Electric Brixton ^
Nov 15 - London, UK - Betsey Trotwood
Nov 16 - Cologne, DE - Stadthalle ^
Dec 4 - Chicago, IL - The Hideout
Dec 5 - Cleveland, OH - Beachland Tavern
Dec 6 - Detroit, MI - Lager House
Dec 8 - Toronto, ON - Monarch Tavern
Dec 10 - Pittsburgh, PA - Thunderbird Music Hall
Dec 11 - Brooklyn, NY - Union Pool
Dec 12 - Philadelphia, PA - Milkboy
Dec 13 - Boston, MA - Rockwell
Dec 15 - Lancaster, PA - West Arts
Dec 17 - Washington, DC - Songbyrd
Dec 18 - Richmond, VA - Richmond Music Hall
Dec 19 - Durham, NC - The Pinhook
Dec 20 - Asheville, NC - Revival ^
^ supporting Fink
Photo Credit: Phillip Seastrom
Photo Credit: Phillip Seastrom
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