Last month, long-time friends Meg Baird and Mary Lattimore announced their collaborative album Ghost Forests and shared its lead single “Painter Of Tygers.” Today they’re debuting the beautifully tangled “Damaged Sunsets.”

Last year, when Lattimore moved from Philadelphia to California, Baird took her to the San Fransisco MoMA to see Don Dudley’s “Rainbow Series.” According to a press release, the 1964 painting became an inspiration for tracks like “Damaged Sunset.” Dudley’s work depicts a glowing, smog-ridden sunset, but the damage and pollution only seem to increase its brilliance.

The track itself stretches just over eight minutes. It’s strange and intimate and fluid. The duo’s synthesis feels effortless. Baird’s ghostly vocals call back to her psych-folk explorations in Espers and Heron Oblivion, and Lattimore’s experimental harp adds an uneasy spontaneity.

Baird offers further explanation:

This song might be our darker, more urgent love letter to Love from Room 109 at the Islander (On Pacific Coast Highway). It’s not addressed to real person or an entity, but more to a pervasive, complex feeling of place. Staring out to those hazy, technicolor, smoke and pollution-drenched sunsets of our new respective cities, LA and San Francisco, with all their unsettling gorgeousness.

Listen to “Damaged Sunset” below, and check out Baird and Lattimore’s tour dates with Kurt Vile and the Violators.

TOUR DATES:
10/12 – Hamburg, DE @ Grünspan
10/13 – Gothenburg, SWE @ Pustervik
10/14 – Oslo, NO @ Rockefeller
10/15 – Stockholm, SE @ Bern
10/16 – Copenhagen, DK @ Vega
10/18 – Berlin, DE @ Huxleys
10/19 – Munich, DE @ Muffathalle
10/20 – Zurich, CH @ X-Tra
10/21 – Lyon, FR @ Epicerie Moderne
10/22 – Barcelona, ES @ Apollo
10/23 – Madrid, ES @ Teatro Barcelo
10/24 – Lisbon, PT @ ZDB
10/25 – Lisboa, PT @ Lisboa Ao Vivo
10/26 – Porto, PT @ Hard Club
10/27 – Bordeaux, FR @ Rock School Barbey
10/29 – Paris, FR @ La Cigalle
10/30 – Brussels, BE @ Autumn Falls @ AB
11/01 – Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso
11/02 – Koln, DE @ Kantine
11/03 – Den Haag, NL @ Crossing Border
11/04 – Gent, BE @ Autumn Falls @ Bar Mirwaar
11/05 – Brighton, UK @ Concorde 2
11/06 – London, UK @ Shepherd’s Bush Empire
11/07 – London, UK @ Shepherd’s Bush Empire
11/08 – Bristol, UK @ St Philips Gate
11/09 – Birmingham, UK @ The Crossing
11/10 – Machester, UK @ Albert Hall
11/11 – Leeds, UK @ O2 Academy
11/12 – Todmorden, UK @ Golden Lion
11/13 – Glasgow, UK @ O2 ABC
11/14 – Dublin, IR @ Vicar Street
11/15 – Belfast, UK @ The Limelight

Ghost Forests is out 11/9 via Three Lobed Recordings. Pre-order it here.

CREDIT: Rachel Pony Cassells / Charlie Saufley