Colin Stetson will release his new album The love it took to leave you on via Envision Records in North America, and through Invada for the UK and the rest of the world. Ahead of the LP’s release, Stetson has shared the title track.

Recorded over a week in early 2023 at The Darling Foundry, a 144-year old former metalworks facility in Montreal now transformed into a 3500m3 contemporary art complex, with a voluminous main room that still maintains its raw architecture of brick, concrete and steel. Colin says “We were using the same live setup as I normally would to amplify—a full PA in the building’s spaces—so we were really able to move the kind of air that I can move—really saturating the room, hitting the walls hard. And then we further fleshed it out.”

Written some years ago but always intended as the cornerstone of an album, the first single and title track, “The love it took to leave you,” pulses into view from a forlorn and alien distance. Voiced through alto saxophone it sets a scene saturated with yearning—ruminating on the conflicted aches and oscillations that arise from love lost, the grasping, the collapse; and the rebuild, the struggle for dignity, self-compassion, and finally liberation. It’s a composition Colin’s been performing for several years, waiting for the right context to bring its full emotional and musical anatomy to life.

“The first and titular song on my latest record, performed on solo alto saxophone, The love it took to leave you is a love letter to self and to solitude and to tall old trees that sway and creak in the wind and rain.” – Colin Stetson

The new album follows last year’s When we were that what wept from the sea, a sort of sunset parable to the trilogy of albums he launched with New History of Warfare Vol. 1 in 2007—this one acts as a prequel, the origin story in his ongoing world-building dramaturgy. Fully conceived, but not formally written, he describes his elaborate storyline as a “scaffolding to write around, offering a set of images, scenes and an overall story arc, it gives the music shape and emotional contour. It’s not simply just offering up an aesthetic. The essence of it is me. It’s the most personal thing that I do—and can do. There’s an evolution of my body and technical capabilities that keeps on, so every time I make another record, there are things that I could only have played now.”

Colin Stetson
The love it took to leave you
Tracklisting

Side A

1. The love it took to leave you – 7:45
2. The Six – 6:41
3. The Augur – 3:00

Side B

4.Hollowing – 3:19
5. To think we knew from fear – 3:39
6. Malediction – 9:22
7. Green and grey and fading light – 4:23

Side C

8. Strike your forge and grin – 21:52

Side D

9. Ember – 3:14
10. So say the soaring bullbats – 5:14
11. Bloodrest – 4:37

Colin Stetson 2024 Tour Dates

May 14 – Ottawa, ON St @ St Albans Church
May 15 – Ottawa, ON @ St Albans Church
May 16 – Toronto, ON @ Axis Club
August 21-23 – Montreal, QB @ MUTEK Montreal, 25th Anniversary
September 7 – Vancouver, BC @ Christ Church Cathedral
September 8 – Seattle, WA @ The Vera Project
September 10 – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios
September 12 – San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall
September 14 – Los Angeles, CA @ El Rey Theatre (Album Release Show)

Pre-order The love it took to leave you by Colin Stetson HERE