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Kirsten Ludwig has shared her latest single “There You Are” and announced her new album, exclusively here at Paste. The song follows her 2016 sophomore album Honest Tracks. Ludwig’s third record We Get It Now is due out Oct. 5 via Oscar St. Records, an independent label founded by The New Pornographers’ Kathryn Calder.
“There You Are” grew out of Ludwig’s ruminations over the outcome of her last relationship. While touring across Canada behind Honest Tracks, she was left with too much time to think—the sparse Ontario terrain, in particular, allowed her eye to slip over the landscape and drift into her thoughts:
It felt like every time I got in the car to make the trek to the next show, that person was there, again, with me and I couldn’t seem to get away. In a sense, this is the “I’m sorry” song on the record—detailing my shortcomings as well as theirs. I somehow found the strength to admit that there are two sides to everything after all.
The wispy guitars and Ludwig’s ethereal echoes capture the weightless, disoriented feeling of looking out bleary-eyed at an unchanging landscape while on a long drive. “There you are,” Ludwig says, as if seeing her addressee like a mirage in front of her. The song’s story plays out like a one-sided conversation, with Ludwig imagining what she would say to her ex-lover if they were with her: “I miss you all the time, especially on these long drives,” she sings. The washed-out wistfulness diminishes the rage Ludwig says she felt, with only traces of her anger flashing through.
Working as producer alongside Colin Stewart (Destroyer, Black Mountain, Sleepy Sun), on We Get It Now, Ludwig draws influence from the dreamy Beach House and singer-songwriters Laura Marling and Sharon Van Etten, guiding the record through loss and grief with sweeping sincerity.
You can preorder the album here. Listen to “There You Are” below.