Foot Ox Shares New Single "Church (in a box)"

Portland experimental folk band Foot Ox has shared 'Church (in a box),' the second single off their forthcoming album, Topanga Canyon, out October 23 via Lauren Records.

Built around an almost motionless drumbeat, wandering bass, and sighing pedal steel, 'Church (in a box)' is a love song for a landscape – specifically, the rural Arizona that songwriter Teague Cullen once called home. Broken glass, empty yards, windblown dust, and orange sunsets drift through the song as Cullen looks back on a place whose beauty and ugliness have become impossible to separate.

'It's about looking back and realizing you really loved a place, even the ugly parts,' Cullen says.

That sense of place runs throughout Topanga Canyon, an album born after Cullen was invited to spend a week recording at the canyon home Germaine Dunes shares with Buck Meek and their dog, Ringo. With the session already on the calendar, Cullen wrote the record over the course of a single spring before bringing the songs to California to record mostly live with a loose collective of friends and musicians from Kisser, AJJ, Pigeon Pit, iji, Lake, and Foot Ox's Oregon lineup.

Engineered by Dunes and Carly Bond, the sessions unfolded throughout the house and on its front porch, leaving birds, airplanes, wind, conversation, and the natural ambience of the canyon embedded in the recordings. What began as a Foot Ox album became something more communal: a document of a particular place, a particular group of friends, and a brief moment shaped by trust, intuition, and chance.

Topanga Canyon Tracklist

1. Rubber Band

2. August

3. Prairie Song

4. Ringo!

5. Church (in a box)

6. Living Room

7. Hay Francis

8. Cattle Call

9. Sagittariat

10. Denver

11. Chickenwire

12. Karma of Our Times

13. Build Fires

14. New Age Dolphins in the Canyon

About Foot Ox

Foot Ox is an experimental folk band from Portland, Oregon, originally formed by songwriter Teague Cullen in Tempe, Arizona, in 2007. More than a fixed lineup, Foot Ox has always been a revolving door of friends and collaborators, with each recording taking shape around the people who happen to be in the room. The current incarnation brings together musicians from Kisser, AJJ, Pigeon Pit, iji, Lake, and Meernaa, alongside longtime Foot Ox members, creating a sound that is intimate, adventurous, and quietly psychedelic. Inspired by dreams and old films, the songs drift through love, grief, humor, landscapes, and hope using abstract imagery and subtle, unconventional arrangements. Whether stripped down to intimate folk songs or swelling into a full band, Foot Ox has always embraced contrast, allowing each record to become a document of the friendships that made it possible.

Photo Credit: Sean Bonnette