Fulton Lights Release "Nautilus Tattoo" Single; BEST WORLD Album Due

Washington, D.C.'s Fulton Lights has released a new single, 'Nautilus Tattoo,' a love song about weathering life's challenges and feeling lucky to have someone by your side. The track is the latest to be released from the project's anticipated new album, Best World, available digitally and on limited-edition 180g gatefold vinyl on November 6. The song follows the album's recently released single 'A Little Bit Low' and is out now on all digital platforms.

On the song's inspiration, Andrew Spencer Goldman shares, 'This song was written as a love song for my wife, and to me conveys a bit about how you can feel worn down by life but also incredibly lucky and grateful to have the person next to you for who they are. I think there's something universal in that, hopefully.'

To celebrate the album, Fulton Lights will be playing a record release show on November 8 at Galaxy Hut in Arlington, VA.

Best World, the new album from Andrew Spencer Goldman's Fulton Lights project, brings together eight songs that explore time, creativity, parenthood, aging, mortality, and the challenge of staying present in a world that won't hold still. Following the Well the Night Has Come EP and the album's title track, Best World adds three previously unheard songs and marks the first time the complete work will be available on vinyl.

At the heart of the album is the idea of finding meaning and gratitude amid constant change. The title track, built around a now-defunct supermarket called Best World, turns the disappearance of a neighborhood landmark into a meditation on aging, decay, and appreciating what's here before it's gone. 'It wasn't the best supermarket by any means, but it was the best named one I could have ever dreamed of,' says Goldman. 'They might as well have named it 'Be Here Now.' When I passed that sign, it would momentarily challenge my tendency to focus on the future, or the past. Then one day it was painted over, and the end was near. I guess what I'm saying is: be thankful for what you have.'

Written and produced by Goldman and mixed by Grammy-nominated Tony Maimone (Pere Ubu, Book of Knots), the album grew from Fulton Lights' return after a long hiatus following 2018's Moonwalking into the Future. Longtime collaborator TJ Lipple (Aloha) helped reignite the project, encouraging Goldman to stop talking about the songs and get back into the studio.

Across the album, Fulton Lights move between shimmering guitars, creaky piano, horns, strings, distorted keyboards, pedal steel, electronic textures, and experimental instrumentation. The newly unveiled tracks push that palette further, from the inward-looking 'The Wild is Wild' to the intimate 'Nautilus Tattoo' and the six-minute centerpiece 'A Little Bit Low,' featuring celebrated avant-garde bassist James Ilgenfritz, who appeared on Fulton Lights' debut nearly two decades ago. The latter builds from an atmospheric instrumental opening into a sprawling, psychedelic arrangement before arriving at an image that is both apocalyptic and hopeful: the world breaking open, pomegranate seeds scattering, and 613 good deeds spreading across the planet.

'The songs are an invitation to a very special reverie,' says Maimone.

Nearly 20 years into the Fulton Lights project, Best World finds Goldman reckoning with what deserves our attention, what can be preserved, and what we pass forward as everything around us inevitably changes. The result is an expansive, deeply personal album that ultimately asks a simple question: Is this the best world?

Best World Track List

1. Best World

2. The Wild is Wild

3. Nautilus Tattoo

4. A Little Bit Low

5. Hold That Thought

6. These Notes Don't Break

7. Well the Night Has Come

8. Paloma Sadie May

Photo Credit: Pete Duvall