Cotton Jones’ Michael Nau readies his debut solo album, Mowing, for release on Suicide Squeeze Records on February 19, 2016. Recently, Aquarium Drunkard debuted the lead single, “Winter Beat,” calling it “a cozy and fuzzy flurry of psych-pop warmth.”
Listen / Post: “Winter Beat” by Michael Nau
Michael Nau
Mowing
February 19, 2016
1. While You Stand
2. The Glass
3. Smooth Aisles
4. Your Jewel
5. Maralou
6. Mow
7. So, So Long
8. Winter Beat
9. Good Moon
10. Unwound
11. In There
+ First 75 customers that order the custom salmon pink vinyl will receive a copy of the Michael Nau “Love Survive” 7” (Singles Club).
+ First 100 pre-orders (regardless of format) come with a folded 11×17 poster
The music of Michael Nau sounds effortless. For the past eight years,
Nau has written songs with his wife Whitney McGraw under the name
Cotton Jones. Along with their rotating cast of auxiliary members, Nau
and McGraw kept a busy schedule of releasing records, rehearsing, and
touring. Along the way, Nau would track song ideas. There was a
stockpile of these recordings—little sonic experiments, layering
exercises, the occasional fully-formed song—nestled away in the Cotton
Jones compound in the tiny Appalachian city of Cumberland, Maryland,
waiting to be pulled from the shelf and ushered into the sunlight. So
with the help of a few musician friends, Nau sifted through those
recordings. Given the sporadic formation of the songs off of Mowing
there is a surprising continuity and timbre in mood. Album opener “While
You Stand” kicks things off with little more than a delicate acoustic
guitar line and a modestly hummed chorus, the song creates the inviting
aura of sunlight coming through the kitchen window on an early Saturday
morning. Like so many classics in the Cotton Jones canon, songs like
“Your Jewel”, “So, So Long”, and “Unwound” conjure the sounds that
linger on lonely stretches of the radio dial, where Cat Stevens, Harry
Chapin, and Randy Vanwarmer crackle on with their infinite humble
appeal. Elsewhere on Mowing, you can hear Nau’s beguiling
experiments—the bossa nova cadence of “Smooth Aisles”, the woozy chaise
lounge instrumental “Mow”, the baroque pop of “Winter Beat.”
The first LP pressing is limited to 1,000 (300 custom salmon pink
vinyl, 700 black vinyl) copies. Digital download card included.
