As previously reported, Gillian Welch will release her follow-up to 2003’s Soul Journey on June 28. Details were scarce when we first caught word of her long-awaited fifth studio album, but today Welch officially announced the forthcoming LP along with the album cover art (left), the tracklist, and a quote describing the record by the Decemberists’ Colin Meloy, one of Welch’s recent collaborators.
The Harrow & the Harvest “is a new Southern sound,” says Meloy, “with the sort of songs you wouldn’t be surprised to hear issuing from some verdant, wooded hollow in Appalachia; songs you’d expect to hear hollered from an Asheville grange hall, all too late in the evening. Songs with the wry humor of the back porch. Listen to this record with the lights low. Listen to it on an old radio, cradled next to your ear.”
Welch’s new LP, which is produced by longtime collaborator David Rawlings, will be preceded by listening parties at the independent record stores across the U.S. listed here. You can check out the tracklist below, alongside a clip of Welch and Rawlings’ performing new tune “Hard Times,” live from Conor Oberst’s Concert for Equality:
The Harrow & the Harvest
01. Scarlet Town
02. Dark Turn Of Mind
03. The Way It Will Be
04. The Way It Goes
05. Tennessee
06. Down Along The Dixie Line
07. Six White Horses
08. Hard Times
09. Silver Dagger
10. The Way The Whole Thing Ends
“Hard Times” (Live)