Cleveland duo mr. Gnome, includes singer/guitarist Nicole Barille and drummer/pianist Sam Meister. The duo will release their double LP, The Day You Flew Away, on October 16, 2020 via El Marko Records. The album in-studio contributions from touring guitarist/bassist Jonah Meister, and mixing by Mark Rankin (Queens of the Stone Age, Adele, Santigold, Iggy Pop, Florence & The Machine, Bloc Party) and Claudius Mittendorfer (Interpol, Tennis, Temples, Panic at the Disco!, Parquet Courts, Ra Ra Riot). It’s their first album since 2014’s The Heart of a Dark Star.

As a result of their constant touring, the band have built a cult following around North America and Europe In late 2017 tragedy struck as Nicole’s father suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. Two weeks later, Nicole found out she was pregnant, and so began mr. Gnome’s forced hiatus to gather the fragments of their past existence and piece them together into something new and meaningful. Still driven by the timeless and very primal urge to create, Barille and Meister managed to completely lose their minds only to find them again, in the process revamping their home studio and giving birth to a shape-shifting work that encompasses every piece of psychic tension and relief experienced while creating their new lives.

As Barille shares, “The album is primarily about the loss of my father, and the light that followed through the birth of my son. It’s a musical love letter reflecting on the patchwork of emotions people experience during life and especially, grief. It only continued to take on more meaning when I lost my cousin, and when Sam and I both lost his brother through the course of its production. It’s honestly a miracle the album is going to see the light of day.”

“The concept of the album is just that life transforms you,” she continues, “The title isn’t necessarily about the actual day we lost our loved ones, but how that moment changes you from that point on, good or bad.”

Nicole & Sam on Gold Edges

Gold Edges is just our way of saying you have to look at the silver linings of things in order to not lose your mind. For me, focusing on the beauty and light of having our son after the passing of my father and allowing that to pull me out of some very dark places. Our son was almost a year old when we wrote this song and it was his favorite in the batch of material we were working on. He would dance to the demo like crazy in our living room, inspiring the lyrics for the chorus.

mr. Gnome
The Day You Flew Away
Track List

The Day You Flew Away
Murmur
Insane Love
RTO
Golden Daze
Won’t I
Be Here Now
Space Opera
Mourning Light
How To Talk In Technicolor
Now
Time
Psychonaut
You Have You
The Moon
Bashful
Gold Edges
Looper
Sun Drugged
Sonny Daze
It Really Don’t Matter
Me Lo
The Wild Child
Lost
Great Divide
Long Way