Lionlimb AKA: Stewart Bronaugh, recently announced his new album, Spiral Groove, will drop on November 12, 2021 via Bayonet Records. Ahead of the album’s arrival, Bronaugh has shared a video for “Loveland Pass.”

The single is a meditation on Bronaugh’s experience of having panic attacks for the first time a couple years ago. “It was like a door opened I never knew existed and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do to stop or control them,” explains Bronaugh. “Loveland Pass is one of the highest mountain passes in Colorado that has been the site of numerous avalanches, plane and car crashes. When I wrote this song I felt like I was having my own avalanches. The tiniest thought capable of feeding back into intense fear and panic, similar to an avalanche once something would get knocked loose up there and start to slide there wasn’t really anything you could do.”

Angel Olsen on Spiral Groove:

“Right from the start, Spiral Groove pulls us into a rhythmic soundscape, erupting over and over with guitar, piano, synth, drums building and subsiding and returning again with joyful urgency. Above it all Stewart Bronaugh sings cool and steady about his close experiences with death, what it means to endure your losses and the gift of being able to recognize the most real love in your life.”

Written and conceived before Covid-19, these songs were shaped by real-time feedback and the alchemy that happens when a group of well-seasoned musicians gather together. Bronaugh’s compositions found life in the hands of long-time collaborators Joshua Jaeger and Jonathan Sumner. Jaeger’s drumming is intuitive and full of care, creating space for the kind of cello and guitar riffs that flow like water. With Sumner’s rich bass playing following suit, they comprise a rhythm section that sets the stage for Bronaugh’s songwriting. Spiral Groove was inevitably shaped by this chemistry, the essential quality of each song revealing itself during rehearsals and live shows.

As the world shut down during ,the downtime gave Bronaugh the opportunity to delve into design. Inspired by early animation techniques and handmade cinema, he was able to build out lyric videos with a lush but low-tech aesthetic. Though he doesn’t self-identify as a painter, the visual components of Spiral Groove speak for themselves. Experimental fonts and a kaleidoscopic layout recall the “psychedelic experience” of having a seizure that left Bronaugh suddenly aware of the limits of his own body. Angel Olsen describes the “joyful urgency” in these songs–they are like a hopeful spell for life after the end of the world.

Lionlimb
Spiral Groove
Tracklist
Bayonet Records

1. Electric
2. Everyday
3. Gone
4. Here
5. Lifespan
6. Loveland Pass
7. Nothing
8. Real Life
9. Temporary
10. Ultraviolet

Pre-order Spiral Groove by Lionlimb HERE