John Grant has been putting out delightfully weird and varied music since leaving the Czars at the beginning of the last decade. His last full-length album was 2018’s Love Is Magic; last year he popped up as a featured vocalist on the second Lost Horizons album, made by Czars champion and Bella Union labelhead Simon Raymonde.

Today, Grant is announcing a new album called Boy From Michigan, which was produced by Cate Le Bon, whose most recent album Reward is still in heavy rotation for me. Back in January, he put out “The Only Baby” from it. The album’s new single and title track is a chill and psychedelic walk back through memory lane for Grant, who grew up in Michigan for the first part of his life. Here’s what he had to say about the track:

I discovered the chord progression in the chorus of ‘Boy from Michigan’ on my OB6 back when I was working on ‘Love is Magic,’ and while I knew it would eventually become a song, I didn’t know what to do with it yet. Sometimes you just know you need to take your time with certain ideas. The song sprang from a moment I experienced when I was about 11 and we were about to move to Colorado from Michigan; my best buddy took me aside and warned me about ‘the world out there’ – so the song is about the transition from childhood to adulthood, the simplicity and innocence of childhood and the oftentimes rude awakening that occurs when one crosses over into adulthood. It’s also about romanticizing the past, which can be dangerous. I don’t believe one can or should live in the past, but if you ignore it, well, you know. I also have to say there are moments when I actually relive the scent of early Spring as the snow was beginning to melt revealing the wet Earth beneath. It’s incredible.

Listen below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Boy From Michigan”
02 “County Fair”
03 “The Rusty Bull”
04 “The Cruise Room”
05 “Mike And Julie”
06 “Best In Me”
07 “Rhetorical Figure”
08 “Just So You Know”
09 “Dandy Star”
10 “Your Portfolio”
11 “The Only Baby”
12 “Billy”

Boy From Michigan is out 6/25 via Partisan/Bella Union.