Photo: Brett Carlson

Matthew Dear will release Preacher’s Sigh & Potion: Lost Album, his first LP since 2018, on Ghostly International.

Dear, from Ann Arbor, Michigan, recorded Preacher’s Sigh & Potion: Lost Album over a decade ago. We’re told that it represents “a pivot” both in Dear’s thinking and sensibilities, and that its looped guitars and folky swing differ from his techno background. Inspired by Emmylou Harris as well as the fingerpicking guitar style of his own father, Dear channeled those elements through the patterns and loops he uses for house and techno. While there were hints of the album’s sound on Asa Breed, Dear’s third album in 2007, Preacher’s Sigh & Potion: Lost Album is the first time Dear has tapped so directly into his late father’s influence.

“On one trip down to Austin, I took some of my dad’s equipment and tried to lay out a song using what I knew about techno arrangement but use his guitars and various small instruments to layer a more organic loop-based sound,” Dear recalls. “I’d say that was the beginning of this album. Realizing I could apply what I’d been doing in the computer to the other music I loved and grew up with.”

We’re told to expect an album that finds Dear “unknowingly at an intersection in his young run, a burgeoning songwriter at his most freewheeling and unaffected.”

Tracklisting

01. Muscle Beach
02. Sow Down
03. Hikers Y
04. Never Divide
05. All Her Fits
06. Supper Times
07. Crash and Burn
08. Heart to Sing
09. Eye
10. Head
11. Gutters And Beyond

Preacher’s Sigh & Potion: Lost Album LP is scheduled for June 25 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Muscle Beach” and “Supper Times” in full below.