Today Nate Mercereau shares two more tracks from his forthcoming studio album, SUNDAYS,which will be released on his own How So Records, a partnership with Nice Life Recording Company, on Sept. 24, 2021. Mercereau recently released a surprise project, Duets | Golden Gate Bridge which found him recording a series of duets with the ghostly hum that’s been coming from the bridge – the release grabbed the attention of NPR, The Guardian, SF Chronicle, CBC and Guitar World, just to name a few. Today he’s sharing SUNDAYStracks “Every Moment Is The First And Last” and “Absolute Sensitivity.” Both tracks are available on all streaming platforms now and SUNDAYS is available to pre-order / pre-save here.
Mercereau shares the inspirations behind the two new tracks:
“Every Moment Is The First And Last” – “Nothing is ever the same twice. Even exact repetition of something will be different each time. The planet is in a different location, everything is constantly moving on every possible scale. The birth of my daughter has been the clearest example of every moment being the first and last.”
“Absolute Sensitivity” – “Sensitivity is often spoken about in a negative light. ‘You’re being too sensitive,’ is a popular deflection. I don’t think it’s possible to be too sensitive. I want to reframe sensitivity as something to aspire to, a form of strength, instead of something I need to cover up or be ashamed of.”
Listening to Nate Mercereau’s music feels like staring down a kaleidoscope. The songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist surveys the fractured borders between sounds, and celebrates the beautiful moments where they collide. And when he’s not making his own music, he’s looking at the world of pop through his prismatic perspective—he’s produced or played on records by Jay-Z, Shawn Mendes, Lizzo, and The Weeknd, just to name a few. Moreover, Mercereau has learned that no matter what sounds he’s working with he needs to lean in close, to focus on the details. “When you keep zooming in on something, it keeps getting more detailed,” says the Los Angeles-based artist. “It’s like there’s worlds within that world.” His new album, SUNDAYS, embodies that as he dives headlong into a mystical, rich vein of sonic worlds, each song more intricate and intimate than the last.
SUNDAYS developed out of what Mercereaucalls “spontaneous composition”—weekly delves into his psyche via live-streamed performance. The sets were built in fluid collaboration with a series of percussive improvisations dreamt up by Carlos Niño, a forward-thinking producer, instrumentalist, and staple of L.A.’s experimental scene. Due to its open beginnings, SUNDAYS is both free of form and packed with complexity —at any given moment it can feel airy, dusty, serene, or fiercely passionate. The ten tracks don’t seem like traditionally structured songs. They’re human, emotional, and alive. “Everything I’m doing is about getting breath out of my body,” Mercereau says. “It really feels elemental.”
SUNDAYS began less as an album and more as a space to process the world. Over the course of 2020, Mercereau began a weekly Sunday livestream series. “That day of the week is particularly charged for me for many reasons,” he says. “It’s the end of a week, and the beginning of something else, and there’s just always something that happens that day emotionally if I can tune into it.” Niño would send a long-form improvisation before the set, then Mercereau would play and create along with it in real-time, creating a palpable sense of live interaction. As Mercereau explains, “There were so many moments where it felt like borderline psychic communication happening between us, even though we made many of our parts at different times.” The weekly sessions lasted from April to December. By the end, Mercereau knew he had an album on his hands, and began whittling it into a cohesive shape.
How So Records is a partnership with Ricky Reed’s Nice Life Recording Company, a venture Mercereau describes as “a record label for seekers. We are presenting music that is looking for something new, out of its audience and out of its creators. We are bound not by genre, only radical creativity. High level music for high level listening.”
