Last year, MJ Lenderman joined Katie and Allison Crutchfield in their new band Snocaps. We know Lenderman as the premiere indie rock guitar hero of his generation, but he played drums in Snocaps, and he's not done playing drums yet. Today, the New Orleans via Tampa singer-songwriter Thomas Dollbaum announces a new album called Birds Of Paradise, which he recorded with a band that includes our guy Lenderman beating up the skins.
This Thomas Dollbaum is an interesting guy. He moved to New Orleans to get his master's degree in poetry, and he works as a carpenter there. He released his debut album Wellswood in 2022, and he followed it with his Drive All Night EP last year. He sings in a high, expressive wail with some serious twang in it; I hear some Jeff Mangum in his voice. For his sophomore album Birds Of Paradise, Dollbaum assembled a band that includes Lenderman, multi-instrumentalist Josh Halper, and the Convenience's Nick Corson. They learned and recorded the tracks with producer/engineer Clay Jones over the course of four days at Dial Back Sound in Water Valley, Mississippi.
Lenderman appears throughout the album on drums, percussion, and backing vocals, and he adds an excellently ragged, bittersweet guitar solo to the lead single "Dozen Roses." It's a warm, soaring rocker about loss: "When you were a kid, the whole world felt like a lonesome ocean/ Closing in with every wave that seems to come your way/ I look now, and it’s just tide pulled out of motion/ A couple walks and then a dozen roses on their way."
In a press release, Dollbaum says:
"Dozen Roses" is the second track on Birds Of Paradise, a Part II to the album opener "Visitation." That song is an introduction of sorts to the themes of the record; “magical thinking” is a way to process the world and the memories I have. "Dozen Roses" is more about the passing of time, and acknowledgment of never feeling like there is enough of it. I also really feel like both songs (and the rest of the record) are grounded in the natural world, and sort of the magic that brings.
Below, check out the Alluvial-directed "Dozen Roses" video and the Birds Of Paradise tracklist.
TRACKLIST:
01 "Visitation"
02 "Dozen Roses"
03 "Rabbits"
04 "Coyote"
05 "Waterbirds"
06 "Big Boi"
07 "Pulverize"
08 "King's Landing"
09 "Scrub Jay"
10 "Blue Meets Blue"
Birds Of Paradise is out 5/22 on Dear Life.
