Canon Pence of Twilark stopped by Live & Local this week, ahead of the release of his new album, “Never Learned the Tide.”
“I recorded it late summer last year in Nashville,” Pence says of the album – his second, after last year’s debut “The Taming Ties Create.” “I had been looking to record my second album with a different vibe: we did a whole album with a live band in the studio, a different instrumentation… (and) most of the songs were recorded live, (which) was new to me. That was scary.”
But the finished product is just as high-quality as ever: led by memorable singles like “The Deeper I Fall” and “Prettiest Way To Die,” the twelve tracks on “Tide” are a perfect merging of Pence’s “old melancholic indie” sound with lyrics that combine playful irreverence with just the right amount of darkness. (Perhaps best exemplified by “Prettiest Way To Die,” a song inspired by a tree Pence saw that was being slowly choked by invasive wisteria. “As a true Southern musician, I got to have a murder ballad somewhere in there,” he says with a laugh.)
Listen to the album and purchase it on Bandcamp.
As for that name? Twilark is essentially a solo project, but Pence says he wanted a name that would evoke his style of music.
“And it hit me in a dream,” he says. “In the dream, I was like, ‘Twilark!’ And also in the dream I was like, ‘That’s it. That’s the name. I figured it out.'”
Now that the album’s out, Pence is celebrating with a pair of shows – starting Friday, September 11, when Twilark will play a set at Schoolkids Records in Raleigh as part of a Hopscotch Music Festival day party. The official album-release show will come a little later: Thursday, October 22, at Neptunes in Raleigh.
“It’s a weird time to be releasing music,” Pence says. “There’s never (been) an easier time to release music – but there’s (also) so much good stuff out, so it’s easy to fear that it’ll go nowhere. But I’m here. I love making it. I’m grateful for the audience I have. And I’m excited for the stuff we have coming up.”
Conor Pence stopped by Live & Local this week to discuss “Never Learned the Tide” and perform three songs live in the 97.9 The Hill studio: “Prettiest Way to Die,” “No Cowboy Song,” and “Impermanence.” Listen:
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