On her upcoming album Meet Me at the Gloaming – out October 14 via Father/Daughter (US) and Hand in Hive (UK) – California-based artist A.O. Gerber courts the fault lines between memory and retrospect with incisive beauty and inquisitiveness. Her new single “Only Mystery” reexamines her relationship with her father, the ways they connected or didn’t connect, filling up gaps with new burgeoning thought.
The song’s fingerpicking melody is adorned with gorgeous, textural swells of strings, saxophones and synths, reminding these ears a bit of Sunny Day Real Estate’s “Rain Song” in its autumnal atmospherics. Gerber’s plain-spoken, whispered voice, directly addressing her father, feels so intimate, you find yourself somewhat red-cheeked for eavesdropping in.
“I wrote this song about trying to get to know my father in the waning years of his life and grappling with how hard that is”, she says of the song. “The desire for closeness at odds with the reality of our history. He’s an incredible saxophone player — I grew up eavesdropping on him playing in our living room. Even though we never really connected around music, I have to imagine that had a huge influence on my desire to be a musician. I knew I wanted to have saxophone on this song as a sort of homage to him. Sam Gendel’s eerie and subtly-omnipresent playing is one of my favorite parts of the track.”
Watch the sweet video, a mix of carefully edited family footage, directed by her best friend Alexa Nikol Curran. Listen to “Only Mystery” below or on other streaming platforms.
Preorder Meet Me at the Gloaming here. Keep updated on A.O. Gerber via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. She also has announced a string of tour dates in The Fall, which can be found here below.
21st Oct – Los Angeles, CA @ The Airliner
3rd Nov – Brooklyn, NY @ Union Pool
11th Nov – Manchester, UK @ Gullivers
12th Nov – Glasgow, UK @ The Great Western
13th Nov – Newcastle, UK @ Cumberland Arms
15th Nov – Bristol, UK @ Crofters Rights
16th Nov – London, UK @ Folklore
Tickets are on sale via A.O. Gerber’s official website.
