It’s been almost four years since the Walkmen went on hiatus, and in that time a few of their members have been pretty active, with frontman Hamilton Leithauser and Walter Martin each releasing a few solo records. Peter Matthew Bauer — who had served on keys/guitar in the Walkmen — also released a solo album, Liberation!, in 2014. He’s been mostly quiet since then, unless you caught him on one of his living room tours (in which he crossed the continent in his car, playing in people’s homes), ran into one of the bands he’s been managing, or happened upon his other endeavor, the Laurel Canyon Center For Consciousness Studies in LA, an outlet for his other life in astrology/Eastern philosophy/psychology.

Today, Bauer’s announcing his sophomore solo outing, Mount Qaf (Divine Love). Pegged as a collection of “esoteric love songs,” it continues where Liberation! left off, mixing Bauer’s penchant for classic-sounding rock songs about love and relationships with his more idiosyncratic strain of philosophical thought. Case in point, Mount Qaf (Divine Love) has some fairly wild track titles, like “Divine Love To Kill Fascism” and “Transhistoric Cycles Of Time.” Along with the album announcement, Bauer has also shared a video for the lead single, “Khidr (American Drifter Music).” It’s a dusty, churning anthem, a song that sounds like it was lost to the years and then exhumed in ragged, sepia-toned grandeur. As the title implies, it’s built to soundtrack rambling journeys down American highways through the middle of nowhere. Check it out below.

Mount Qaf (Divine Love) tracklist:

01 “Wild Light”
02 “Hold on to Someone”
03 “Full Moon In the Sky”
04 “Divine Love to Kill Fascism”
05 “Khidr (American Drifter Music)”
06 “You Always Look For Someone Lost”
07 “See You In the Streets (Desolate Town)”
08 “Will You Still Speak of Love”
09 “Transhistoric Cycles of Time”
10 “I Ching (Àlam al Mithal)”

Mount Qaf (Divine Love) is out 11/10 via Fortune Tellers Music/Kobalt.

CREDIT: Kellen Nordstrom