Fulton Lights to Release Best World Album
Andrew Spencer Goldman's project will perform a record release show at Galaxy Hut in Arlington, Virginia.
Washington, D.C.'s Fulton Lights will release a new album, Best World, on November 6, digitally and on limited edition 180g gatefold vinyl. The band has also shared a new single, 'A Little Bit Low,' a song that explores the tension between a world in violent decline and the possibility of regeneration and hope, drawing on imagery of the pomegranate and its fabled 613 seeds. The song debuted at Rock and Roll Globe and is out now on all streaming platforms.
On the song, the band's Andrew Spencer Goldman says, 'I'm a pretty secular person and don't know why this image came to me, but I was reminded of something I'd learned decades ago as a kid growing up Jewish about the pomegranate supposedly having 613 seeds, lining up with the number of possible 'mitzvot' (good deeds). There's a combination here of this feeling that things are degenerating, violently breaking down, and yet yielding something regenerative and hopeful, and trying to do my part for the latter.'
To celebrate the album, Fulton Lights will play 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 critically acclaimed 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
8. Paloma Sadie May
Photo Credit: Pete Duvall
Photo Credit: Pete Duvall
