Just the other week, Jenn Wasner guested on Haerts' Laguna Road lead single “Woman On The Line.” A few months before that, she contributed to Bon Iver's latest record SABLE, fABLE. Now the singer-songwriter and Wye Oak member is announcing her latest solo album as Flock Of Dimes, The Life You Save, out this fall.
The Life You Save was self-produced and has additional production from Sylvan Esso's Nick Sanborn. It follows 2021's Head Of Roses. Here's what Wasner had to say about it:
My previous records, generally, have been a summary of things I had already been through — experiences I had observed and reflected upon, reporting back from some amount of distance. But this record is different. It is an attempt to report from inside of a process that is ongoing and unfinished, from which I will likely never fully emerge as long as I am alive: my struggle within the cycles of addiction and co-dependency.
I set out trying to make a record about other people.
Their problems, their struggles, their addictions.
I struggled for many years to give myself permission to write about this subject — worried that I was telling someone else’s story, a story that was not mine to tell. The work felt hazy and obscured; I was confused, and I struggled. The beauty of songwriting, at its best, is that it puts you in touch with your subconscious — a place where you can only tell the truth. Many of those truths were hard to accept. Some I don’t, even now, feel fully ready to say. But through this process, I came to understand that I was struggling with this record because I wasn’t being honest with myself. I was so deeply entrenched in the system in which I was raised that I thought I was outside of it, and the ways in which I continued to participate remained invisible to me.
But slowly, painstakingly, through this work I began to realize — I am not apart from all of this. I have been performing my role from a distance, but I am still engaged, still connected:
I’m inside it, after all.
As it turns out, this record is not someone else’s story — it is mine, the story of my life. A life spent believing I had escaped, and that I deserved to feel guilty for doing so. A life in which I believed that the right combination of words, actions, effort, and expense could somehow change others’ behavior. And a life in which blindness to my own patterns caused me to hurt others, and prevented me from finding the true love and acceptance I yearned for.
The belief that you can rescue others comes from more than one place, internally speaking. The part that is easiest to see and acknowledge is the one that stems from love, good intentions, and a genuine desire to offer care and support. But there’s an uglier side, and that part is harder to look at — the ego, the pridefulness, the belief that you are better, stronger, somehow more deserving than all the rest. That through your attempts to control others’ behavior, you can somehow secure a sense of safety for yourself.
I know the rules, but I ignore them,
I think I’m good enough to pull this off.Or, more simply:
I think I’m god; I know I’m not.
For me, that was the puzzle piece that finally made it all make sense. But it was also the piece that was the hardest to hold. It took a long time for me to build up enough love — not for others, but for myself — that acknowledging this truth would not break me. I understand now that I’m not the savior, not the hero, not the chosen one. I’m spinning in my own wheel, a bundle of addictions and adaptations and blind spots, just like everybody else. And there is a beauty to that, along with a kind of freedom.
In the end, it is my hope that this record exists as a testament to the depth of my love for those I cannot save, and that it might provide some comfort for anyone who is still learning how to love and live for themselves.
The lead single "Long After Midnight" comes with a music video directed by Spence Kelly. Watch it below.
TRACKLIST:
01 "Afraid"
02 "Keep Me In The Dark"
03 "Long After Midnight"
04 "Defeat"
05 "Close To Home"
06 "The Enemy"
07 "Not Yet Free"
08 "Pride"
09 "Theo"
10 "Instead Of Calling"
11 "River In My Arms"
12 "I Think I'm God"
TOUR DATES:
11/06 - Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda's
11/07 - New Haven, CT @ Space Ballroom
11/08 - Brooklyn, NY @ National Sawdust
11/09 - Somerville, MA @ The Rockwell
11/11 - Washington, DC @ The Atlantis
11/12 - Saxapahaw, NC @ Haw River Ballroom
12/01 - Seattle, WA @ Barboza
12/02 - Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios
12/04 - San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop
12/05 - Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon
The Life You Save is out 10/10 via Sub Pop. Pre-order it here.
