villagerr – Swimming

At the start of March, villagerrr announced their new LP Carousel, their first on new label home Winspear (Teethe, Wishy, Swapmeet). The follow up to 2024’s breakout release Tear Your Heart Out, Carousel will be released on May 29th.

Carousel glides from slowcore to shoegaze, from log-cabin folk to the accelerated bliss of rock tailor-made for an empty freeway. Piecing the music together over the course of two years, Scott let the collaborative spirit of his previous record flourish. Where his 2024 LP featured Merce Lemon and feeble little horse’s Lydia Slocum, Carousel features a melange of Scott’s rising folk and indie rock peers, including Boone Patrello of Teethe, h. pruz and Carolina Chauffe of Hemlock, and was mixed by Scott after listening back to rough drafts on long drives or on runs. Carousel harbors a lot of healthy skepticism about the world we’re in now, but it also holds up proof that just laying down your guard and reaching out to other people can spark creatively bountiful relationships–and set the foundation for a life that’s deeply, meaningfully livable.

The new album was announced with a single called “Locket,” and today, the band are sharing a second preview of their new record, a track called “Swimming.”

Leader Mark Allen Scott describes the track, which features Zack Wiggs on pedal steel, as “a song about learning to communicate, express, and process your emotions in a healthy way,” and it’s accompanied by a video directed by Trevor Hock.

Nothing’s as scary or sweet in this world than opening yourself up to a genuine connection with another person. Carousel, the fifth album Mark Scott has released as villagerrr, spills over with these wholehearted leaps of faith. His big, midwestern songs smolder with a desire to find enduring meaning in an era rife with commodification, surveillance, and general instability. The boldest and most delicate album to date from the Ohio songwriter, Carousel is a tender and sweeping exploration of what it means to try to make sincere art in a hyperexposed and constricting age.

When he started to record Carousel, Scott worked on a slower timeline than any of his previous albums, piecing the music together over the course of two years. He also let the collaborative spirit of his previous record flourish even further, asking the friends he’d made playing shows to contribute to the songs in progress. Scott would begin songs alone at home in Columbus, sketching out their structures before emailing them to friends like Boone Patrello of the band Teethe. Over time, his collaborators wove new and striking elements into the music, a slowly blooming process that deepened and enriched Scott’s relationship to his own work.

“I got really excited about how many of my friends were down to play on this album,” Scott says. “I didn’t grow up around a lot of musicians. Now, even after just a few years of playing shows, I’ve met so many people who are all trying to play with each other. If you make something that they like, and you like their stuff, it’s as easy as reaching out and asking if they want to collaborate.”

A newly dynamic chapter in villagerrr’s discography, Carousel glides from slowcore to shoegaze, from log-cabin folk to the accelerated bliss of rock tailor-made for an empty freeway. Scott has a keen ear for both particulate detail and expansive landscape; listening to villagerrr can feel like peering into prairie grass to see what’s crawling there, then standing up suddenly to witness the splendor of an oncoming storm.

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