Kris Delmhorst, Chris Pureka

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Sasha Pedro

A close-up of Kris Delmhorst.

Kris Delmhorst

$25 ($20 adv.).

media release: Kris Delmhorst released “Not the Only One” today, her third single in advance of Ghosts in the Garden, out March 7^th. Floating over a gentle waltz tempo, Delmhorst sings with clear-eyed compassion, suggesting in small details the private heartaches we all carry: “Hey you watching the bus leave without you / you letting your coffee get cold / hey you blinded by sunshine / you feeding birds in the snow.” By the time Anna Tivel’s voice joins in on the bridge, the focus has shifted from personal sorrows to communal ones, and heartbreak is revealed as a universal and deeply human condition.  

Delmhorst muses about the creation of “Not the Only One”, “I worked on this song intermittently for maybe ten years; it’s been a bunch of different songs over the course of its journey. I stuck with it so long because of my fascination with the tagline ‘you’re not the only one here with a broken heart.’ I love that it cuts two ways, as reassurance that you’re not alone, and/or a reality check to remember that your pain isn’t the only pain.   

“Ultimately it became a song about the invisible griefs and struggles that accompany each of us through our life. And about the impossible disconnect of carrying the knowledge of the brutality and sorrow of this world as we go about the necessary business of our day-to-day.  

“Anna Tivel graced this one with guest vocals, and the fathomless compassion of her voice made the reach of it feel so vast.”

“Not the Only One” follows “Something to Show”, a dark and dreamy midnight missive, a field report from the suspended state between sleep and wakefulness released on December 6. See Kris and band play the song in studio HERE. Hear it HERE.

On January 10, Delmhorst released “Won’t Be Long”, a Jayhawks-style, guitar-heavy track that pairs lyrics of restlessness and uncertainty with a musical jolt of desperate exhilaration. She is joined on vocals by guest Rachel Baiman who adds energy and urgency to the song's arc. Hear it HERE. Video HERE.    

With Ghosts in the Garden, the acclaimed songwriter continues her decades-long career with an enveloping collection of songs offering a layered, kaleidoscopic meditation on grief and loss. The eleven songs are vividly inhabited by a host of tangible spirits: the departed and the disappeared, sins and their consequences; lost loves, missed chances, and the invisible sorrows that accompany us all. With richly observed details and finely calibrated emotional range, Delmhorst finds the wavelength that illuminates these multitudes. Having summoned them, she doesn’t avert her eyes from her ghosts – or ours – but invites them into an expansive conversation with the living about the ways we’re all shaped by loss and woven together by unseen threads of love.

The album was tracked live at Great North Sound Society, a studio built into an 18th-century Maine farmhouse that no doubt harbors ghosts of its own, with a core band of Ray Rizzo (Josh Ritter, Anaïs Mitchell) on drums, Jeremy Moses Curtis (Jeffrey Foucault, Booker T) on bass, and Minnesota songwriter Erik Koskinen on guitars. Engineer Sam Kassirer added keys, and Rich Hinman contributed pedal steel. Finally, Delmhorst invited in a luminous host of fellow songwriters to add vocals to the finished tracks. The guests - Anaïs Mitchell, Rose Cousins, Anna Tivel, Ana Egge, Taylor Ashton, Rachel Baiman, Jabe Beyer, and Jeffrey Foucault - lend unique personality and emotional slant to each track, refracting the songs’ light in all directions.  

Delmhorst heads out on tour on March 4, spending a week in the Midwest before heading to the Pacific Northwest and West Coast at the end of March and early April and finally, heading to her home region of the Northeast in early May. She’ll be touring with her band, who also played on Ghosts, Erik Koskinen on guitar, Jeremy Moses Curtis on bass and Ray Rizzo on drums. Rose Cousins, who provides some guest vocals on Ghost, will be joining for most of the Midwest and a few of the NE shows and Ana Egge, who also guests on the album, will be joining in Brooklyn. More info at KrisDelmhorst.com 

“bold and brilliant” - Irish Times

“literate and allusive” - Boston Globe

“moody, euphoric and transcendent” - LA Times