photo credit: Alison Narro

The latest album from Matt Sever (aka Matt The Electrician)  is set for release on November 5. The singer-songwriter enlisted  Tucker Martine (Decemberists, Neko Case, First Aid Kit) to produce We Imagined an Ending. Sever observes, “On all of his records, Tucker creates this wider space. There’s just this natural wide space to this album that I really love.”

The acclaimed folk artist reflected on the passing of his mom as well as the suicide of Neal Casal while crafting the material for the forthcoming album. He explains, “There’s actually a lot of death on this album. But it’s more about the cycle of things. The full line in “When the Lights Go Out” is, ‘We imagined an ending, and then tried to let it go.’  We all have what we think is going to be the way things are going to work out, but then they don’t always work out that way at all. Like you might think, ‘Oh, we’ll see Mom next Christmas,’ or whatever, and then you just don’t. So then you have to just figure out how to move on and get through that. And as hard as it may be, there’s growth that comes out of that moving-on process, and things you learn from it. And out of that growth comes… hope.”

Today we are premiering the video for “Big Changes.” Sever himself directed the video and tells Relix, “I married into a hardcore backpacking family. If they had a family crest, it would be the Sierra Nevada mountain range. If they had a family motto, it would be ‘Leave No Trace.’   As a camping neophyte, I gradually learned to be in the wilderness over the years, alongside my  children.   For the video, I borrowed my favorite Wes Anderson-ish aesthetic, as it mirrors how I see myself among the professional outdoors-people.  A consummate, well-intentioned dork.”

We Imagined an Ending is now available for pre-order.