Description
SKU/Barcode: 708527028223
Release in October coincides with American tour dates with the recently revived Neutral Milk Hotel. The band recorded the latest record in a variety of settings ranging from singer/songwriter Andrew Rieger's home studio, to Athens, GA's The Glow studio, to Lavonia, GA's Gypsy Farm Studios, a long derelict country music theatre located in rural Georgia. Newly renovated and transformed into a recording studio, the beautiful auditorium hosted concerts from the likes of Dolly Parton, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and George Jones throughout the 1970s and 1980s. The album's title originates from accounts Rieger read of astronauts who described their experience of walking on the moon as disorienting and hallucinatory due to the utter darkness of the shadows on the moon, describing their own shadows as 'pieces of night following them around'. Some of the songs sprung from a return to Elf Power's original mode of songwriting, writing and recording the song simultaneously without rehearsal. Songs like 'Lift the Shell', 'A Grey Cloth Covering My Face' and 'Things Lost' were recorded as they were being written with Rieger playing all of the basic instrumentation and other band members later embellishing the creations with their own flavors. Often, a more fully rehearsed 'full band' version was recorded as well, but the more minimalistic original versions were preferred for their stranger, looser qualities.