Listen to Joanna Sternberg’s Subtle New Single “Step Away”

New York City-based Joanna Sternberg is an artist who doesn’t make art—at least not by their standards.

The 28-year-old musician, singer/songwriter and visual artist is clearly adept in several forms of what we’d call “art”—they draw comics, play piano and guitar, and have a double bass degree from The New School for Jazz & Contemporary Music—but, according to the liner notes from their new album Then I Try Some More (out July 12 on Team Love), “They also do not like using the word music to describe music, or the word art to describe art.” In an age when music genres often seem impossible to define and art can mean so many different things, it’s a fair stance to take. But whatever you want to call it, Sternberg is sharing a new slice of creativity today in the form of a delicate new single, “Step Away,” the last to arrive before Then I Try Some More’s release.

Sternberg sounds a bit like another Joanna—Newsom, that is, whose playful freak-folk attracted a cult following in the early 2000s. Sternberg wields similarly whimsical, barebones arrangements with that same childlike attitude. “Step Away,” a stripped-down acoustic tune, finds Sternberg in awe, gazing upon someone “too beautiful for me.” They sway from self-deprecation to complimentary observation throughout the song, which is a curious, unassumingly smart ditty.

If you’re NYC-based, you can catch Sternberg at a show this summer, or otherwise on tour across the Midwest and Northeast with Conor Oberst.

Listen to “Step Away” below, and keep scrolling for Sternberg’s tour dates and the Then I Try Some More album art. You can preorder their album right here.

Joanna Sternberg Tour Dates:

July
12 – Brooklyn, N.Y. @ The Glove (Album Release Show)
17 – Portsmouth, N.H. @ Prescott Park Free Concert Series*
18 – Providence, R.I. @ Columbus Theater*
19 – Norwalk, Ct. @ Wall St Theater*
20 – Bearsville, N.Y. @ Bearsville Theater*
21 – Jersey City, N.J. @ White Eagle Hall*
23 – Kalamazoo, Mich. @ Bells Brewery *
24 – Chicago, Ill. @ Thalia Hall*
25 – Cincinatti, Ohio @ Taft Theatre*
26 – Bloomington, Ill. @ Castle Theater*
27 – Maquoketa, Iowa @ Codfish Hollow*
28 – Minneapolis, Minn. @ Weesner Amphitheater*

August
18 – Brooklyn, N.Y. @ Alphaville

(* = with Conor Oberst)

Then I Try Some More Album Art: