Over six (soon to be seven) albums, Stephen Steinbrink has attracted the attention and affection of fellow musicians and the coveted Bandcamp set for his introspective, lush, elegantly experimental records. His last release was 2014’s Arranged Waves, which demonstrated a songwriter at the top of his game, and his next record, Anagrams, doesn’t miss a beat.

“While making Anagrams I felt like I was losing it,” Steinbrink explains in a press release. “Lately writing songs almost makes the world seem more chaotic, like I keep digging up [and] reburying the same old bone. For this album I tried to continue unpacking these forgotten images and memories, except this time without placing any subjective meaning on them, or any expectation of personal growth to occur after. Maybe it’s silly to expect the process of making art to be a clarifying act.”

Despite his own reservations, Steinbrink keeps finding new ways to catalog the same old despair, and if clarification wasn’t the goal, it certainly was the result. “Absent Mind,” the record’s lead single, is melodic and self-assured. Steinbrink delivers his knotted lyricism with a smooth lilt: “I wish I was good at soothing the doubt/ I wish I was better at quenching the drought/ When you want to die.” “Absent Mind” is the clearest and purest Steinbrink has ever sounded, but it also feels like him at his most conflicted. Listen below.

Tour Dates:
04/13 Oberlin, OH @ Medicine Square Garbage
04/15 Brooklyn, NY @ Silent Barn
04/16 Annandale-on-Hudson, NY @ Bard College
04/17 Amherst, MA @ Hampshire College
04/18 Providence, RI @ Aurora
04/19 Brooklyn, NY @ Palisades
04/20 Philadelphia, PA @ LAVA Space
04/21 Baltimore, MD @ The Crown
04/22 Washington, DC @ Above The Bayou
04/23 Bennington, VT @ Bennington College
04/24 New York, NY @ Cake Shop
04/25 Portland, ME @ Sandy’s
04/27 Montreal, QB @ Casa Del Popolo
04/28 Toronto, ON @ The Smiling Buddha
06/29 Los Angeles, CA @ The Bootleg Theater

Anagrams is out 7/1 via Melodic Records. You can pre-order it here.