Nat Baldwin Album Release Show with Butcher Boy

We’re stoked to announce that Nat Baldwin returns to play his first headline show at SPACE. The performance will also celebrate the launch of Nat’s newest album, In The Hollows which was released on April 29. You can listen to the title track here.

In The Hollows is Nat Baldwin’s followup to 2010’s People Changes. Despite his busy schedule recording and touring as the bass player for Dirty Projectors, Nat found time to write and record his most soulful and ambitious collection of songs to date. After recording the initial tracks at Machines With Magnets in Pawtucket, RI, Nat recruited Otto Hauser for drums and percussion, and Rob Moose and Clarice Jensen to write string arrangements. Discussing the album’s production, Nat says “I wanted to achieve a consistency throughout that my past albums have lacked. I wanted the strings to add to the mournful quality of the songs, weaving their way through the sonic terrain, providing emotional emphasis, but also leaving necessary amounts of space. Albums by Nick Drake, Judee Sill, Joanna Newsom, Antony & the Johnsons, and Bill Callahan, to name a few, provided inspiration in balancing that intimacy with minimal, but powerful, adornments.”

Much of the album was written while Nat was training for a marathon at his home in Maine. According to Nat, “I had a pretty rigorous and consistent routine of running/working out early in the morning, and working on music all afternoon/evening. I also started reading obsessively during this time, as I wasn’t moving around much after the morning marathon training. Some of the songs were inspired by books I was reading, and some were inspired by my lifestyle.” Blending autobiographical details with fiction, the songs cover a wide range of topics including boxing, drowning, bodybuilding, target practice, will power, Steve Prefontaine, competition, separation, isolation, devastation, manipulation, conflagration, intoxication, and suicide.

Immersive, athletic, and often profound, In the Hollows represents his clearest and most consistent album-length statement, melodically, structurally, and lyrically. Nat explains that “I hope it is as unsettling as it is beautiful. I want it to make people feel things they can’t describe.”

Some background – After studying avant-garde jazz and improvisation with jazz legend Anthony Braxton, Nat started writing songs featuring double bass and vocals.  In 2005 he joined Dirty Projectors and in addition to his work with them, he has performed on Grizzly Bear’s Shields, Vampire Weekend’s Contra, and Department of Eagles’ In Ear Park. 

Butcher Boy have existed in Portland, ME for the past 5 years and are now based out of the basement of the house on Poland St. Their music began in broken neck-folk-punk and has turned into what people have described as clattering-post rock-blood-folk. These maybe accurate albeit convoluted genre names and their attention to detail and intent in their music are evidence of why they were voted the Best Category Defying Act of 2013 by The Portland Phoenix. Their musical influences and interests span a wide range, and much of the feelings expressed by their music come from an unnamed place in their hearts. They have toured extensively in the US and Canada and have no intention of relaxing their tour schedule, unless if only to record a new record — for which they are long overdue.