Logan Farmer A Mold For The Bell

"It's going to be hard to talk about this when it's done." So begins A Mold ForThe Bell, the new album from Colorado singer-songwriter and producer LoganFarmer. What follows that enigmatic lyric is a collection of stark and ambientfolk songs, tethered solely by Farmer's unadorned vocals, acoustic guitar, andmoving embellishments from contributors, including saxophonist JosephShabason (who also mixed the album) and renowned harpist Mary Lattimore.With the help of Grammy-nominated producer Andrew Berlin (Gregory AlanIsakov), Farmer tracked all of the vocal and guitar parts over two days in theearly months of 2021. The tracks were recorded quickly, live in the studio tocapture the raw intimacy and immediacy of Farmer's live performances. Therest of the album's creation occurred remotely, over texts, phone calls, andemails with Shabason and a handful of other musicians, as wildfires, insurrec-tions and the pandemic raged around them."I was working at a bookstore that winter," Farmer explains, "and I'd walk to myshift every day, obsessing over lyrics and early mixes in a cheap pair ofearbuds." These daily walks would take him past a church, where he'd oftenstop on the sidewalk and listen to the bells at the top of the hour. "I've alwaysloved the sound of church bells, but as the situation worsened, what began asa comfort began to feel ominous, almost threatening." This experience, along-side influences as disparate as Tarkovsky's film Andrei Rublev and the novels ofOlga Tokarczuk, led to a collection of songs that are similarly foreboding,expanding upon the stark and spacious universe of Farmer's last album(2020's Still No Mother) to reveal an atmosphere that's even more oppressivelystill, like an abandoned Victorian home.