Stream Mountain Man’s First New Album in Eight Years, Magic Ship

Mountain Man’s Magic Ship, their first new album in eight years, is out today, Sept. 21, through Nonesuch Records. Check it out down below.

The group’s previous album, 2010’s Made The Harbor, was an experience in campfire-adjacent hymnals and ghostly three-part harmonies. The trio, formed at Bennington College by Molly Searle, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Amelia Randall Meath, disbanded shortly after touring. The three went their separate ways: Searle to a Zen retreat in California and Sauser-Monnig to a farm in North Carolina, while Meath went on to form electro-pop band Sylvan Esso. The band reunited at Justin Vernon’s Eaux Claires festival last summer.

Magic Ship arose out of that performance, and it inhabits much of that same echoing, Appalachian-haunted space as their previous releases. Their performance on the “tiny, cabin-like stage tucked into a forest” at Eaux Claires inspired them to recreate that setting in the recording process of Magic Ship. “We all got together at Molly’s house in the wintertime, on one of the snowy days that rarely happen in North Carolina,” Sauser-Monnig said in a statement. “We built a fire in the wood stove and shared a handful of songs that felt like they could be right for Mountain Man. It happened really naturally, and all of those songs ended up being on the record.”

Mountain Man will be touring this fall. Check out those dates down below.

Stream Magic Ship below (or via your streaming service of choice here) and listen to Mountain Man’s 2011 performance of “Play It Right” at the Newport Folk Festival further down.

Mountain Man Tour Dates:

October
22 – Washington, D.C. @ Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
23 – Philadelphia, Pa. @ World Cafe Live
25 – Brooklyn, N.Y. @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
27 – Cambridge, Mass. @ The Sinclair
29 – Ann Arbor, Mich. @ The Ark
30 – Chicago, Ill. @ Old Town School of Folk Music

November
01 – Minneapolis, Minn. @ Cedar Cultural Center
02 – Omaha, Neb. @ Waiting Room
03 – Denver, Colo. @ Bluebird Theater
05 – Seattle, Wash. @ St. Mark’s Cathedral
06 – Portland, Ore. @ Doug Fir Lounge
08 – San Francisco, Calif. @ The Independent
09 – Los Angeles, Calif. @ Masonic Lodge
17 – Saxapahaw, N.C. @ Haw River Ballroom