San Fermin Release New Album 'Arms'; US Tour Kicks Off Next Month

The Brooklyn-based band San Fermin released their fifth studio album Arms via their rising independent label Better Company Records.

The 9-song album marks a new direction for the octet as they strip away much of the sonic ornamentation they've come to be known for in favor of a more raw, direct sound reflective of Ellis Ludwig-Leone's candid, plainspoken lyrics. The band will kick off their US album release tour at Treefort Music Fest in March followed by dates in St. Paul, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and many more. Find a full list of tour dates below or visit their website.

“Writing music has always been about bringing people along with me,” says bandleader Ludwig-Leone. “I don't sing my own songs because it's never felt right – I find it much more satisfying to write for my closest friends, find the spaces in the Venn diagram where our lives overlap and build from there.”  

“When my personal life fell apart a couple years ago, that community became even more important to me. I leaned hard on Allen (who produced this album) and my other band members. The process of writing Arms was like drafting an antidote to loneliness. It was clarifying to realize that even under difficult personal circumstances, this has always been why I do what I do: bring people in to create a shared experience that is only possible through music.”  

Earlier this week, Brooklyn Magazine published an extensive profile of the band where they discussed the new album as well as the record label and studio Better Company they started three years ago which has released the works of more than 50 artists in their community.   

Last month, the band released the official radio single “Weird Environment” which has received nearly 300K views on YouTube. The song followed the release of “My Love is a Loneliness” which was praised by FLOOD Magazine, Rolling Stone, who named it a “Song You Need To Know”, and Paste Magazine who proclaimed it one of the best songs of the week and said, "This might just be the new break up anthem we've all been waiting for.” So far, Arms has been embraced by Stereogum, Exclaim, NPR Music's New Music Friday, Northern Transmissions, Far Out Magazine and many more.  

Ten years ago, San Fermin released their critically heralded eponymous album and rocketed to a national audience with NPR inviting them to play a Tiny Desk Concert and calling the album “one of the year's most surprising, ambitious, evocative and moving records” as well as Pitchfork praising their “ambitious chamber pop debut.”

Over the next decade the band would release four albums and become known for their “knack for simultaneously expressing beauty and crisis” (The New Yorker). Arms is the greatest testament to the community the band has built over the last decade, and illustrates their ability to transform crisis into a communal catharsis.   

San Fermin is Ellis Ludwig-Leone (bandleader, songwriter), Allen Tate (vocalist, producer), Claire Wellin (vocalist), Akira Ishiguro (guitar), John Brandon (trumpet), Stephen Chen (saxophone), Tyler McDiarmid (guitar), and Griffin Brown (drums).  

Tour Dates:

3/15: Utrecht, NDL - Birds of Paradise Festival

3/21-22: Boise, ID - Treefort Music Fest

3/23: Salt Lake City, UT - The State Room %

3/24: Denver, CO - Globe Hall %

3/26: St. Paul, MN - Turf Club #

3/27: Chicago, IL - Lincoln Hall #

3/28: Madison, WI - High Noon Saloon #

3/30: Nashville, TN - The Blue Room #

3/31: Columbus, OH - The Basement #

4/2: Washington, DC - Atlantis #

4/3: Philadelphia, PA - Underground Arts #

4/4: Boston, MA - The Sinclair #

4/5: New York, NY - Racket *

4/30: San Diego, CA - Casbah #

5/1: Los Angeles, CA - Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever #

5/3: Pioneertown, CA - Pappy + Harriet’s #

5/4: San Francisco, CA - Independent #

5/7: Portland, OR - Doug Fir Lounge #

5/9: Vancouver, BC - Biltmore Cabaret #

5/10: Seattle, WA - Madame Lou’s #

6/11: Austin, TX - Parish

6/12: Dallas, TX - Deep Ellum Art Co.

6/14: Santa Fe, NM - TBD

# w/ Runnner

* w/ Mutual Benefit

% w/ Rachael Jenkins

Photo Credit: Alex S K Brown

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