The release will be available via Western Vinyl both digital and on vinyl, including a limited deluxe edition which includes liner notes by 2024 National Book Award winner Jason De León (Soldiers and Kings) and poetry from National Book Critics Circle Award Winner Ross Gay (Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude). Both editions of the vinyl include photography from Pulitzer Foundation Grant Awardee Greg Constantine and cover art by Reena Saini Kallat, which is taken from the series Ruled Paper (red, blue, white) which depicts contested geographies around the world. All proceeds will be shared between two Texas-based organisations, American Gateways and Casa Marianella, who provide all manner of support for immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, including food, shelter, access to health care, legal services and other essential things. Plus, on the 4th December, Tim Heidecker will host a live variety show and raffle/auction on his call-in show Office Hours to further support the two organisations.

In preview of the December release, the offerings of Alan Sparhawk and Benjamin Booker have been made available to stream. Both offered statements to explain the context behind the tracks. “Here is a song that came from the struggle to know what to say to someone who is having a hard time,” Sparhawk explains of his song ‘No More Darkness’. “There are real things that we can do to lift each other out of suffering—sometimes it is tangible charity, like this compilation to raise funds and awareness for the plight of immigrants and those who have been displaced. Sometimes it is words of encouragement. It can also just be time spent with someone who needs help getting through the moment. Let’s do our best to turn up the light.”

Fittingly for the compilation’s themes, Booker’s track ‘A Place for Us’ is warm, welcoming and nakedly emotive. Lucid whispered truths over gentle but stark guitar. “The human struggle is a family struggle,” he explains of its ethos. “We rise together and we suffer together. There are so many things out of our control, but we can always open our hearts to love and understanding. May you find light in the darkness.”

Passages: Artists in Solidarity with Immigrants, Refugees, and Asylum Seekers will be released on the 5th December via Western Vinyl and you can pre-order it now.

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Sonically, the album builds upon Ora Cogan’s previous record Bells in the Ruins, blurring the distinctions between dream pop, psych, country and folk to create a sound rooted in traditional balladry yet constantly pushing boundaries. Guest appearances from the likes of Y La Bamba and Lankum’s Cormac Mac Diarmada add further dimensions, and the result is somehow at once cinematic and intimate, Cogan accumulating small details as a means to broach the wider sweep of our times. A style willing to delve into the darker side of things, to poke bruises and scars alike, but always with the purpose of challenging the cruelties of our world, and with the unfailing hope of emerging on some more welcoming other side. “I want to feel good,” as Cogan concludes. “I want other people to feel good. My way of getting there is going towards the pain, through the swamps and finding beauty in the ridiculousness of being human. If it hurts, I want to roll around in it a bit before metamorphosing.”

With its picture of social isolation, the album’s lead single ‘Cowgirl’ serves as our introduction to this world. A sedate jam that’s slow in the way late night always is, the air clouded with one too many cigarettes, something like panic or regret building with a slow drip. But counter to this rising sensation is a sense of distance too. The track plays as a half dream, an out of body experience, a survey of those things felt so keenly at every other hour of the day as taken from above. “There was blood in the corner of your mouth / Stars were falling,” as Cogan sings, “All the dogs were howling / Streetlights were glowing.” Once upon a time, it might have seemed a contradiction to offer this weave of the physical and ethereal, the close and distant, but we have all lived through the same trauma. Have come learn there is no contradiction at all.

I went out on the roof
I felt so dizzy and
I saw the wasteland moving towards me
Someone come get me now

The single comes complete with a suitably cinematic video directed by K Bray Jorstad, utilising VHS/Super 8 textures to evoke the barroom smoke and nocturnal atmosphere. Watch it below:

Formless is out on the 25th August via Prism Tongue Records and you can pre-order it from the Prism Tongue Bandcamp page.

Cover photo by Stasia Garraway, album design by Malcolm Jack

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