Ben Seretan has announced a new album, Allora, due July 26 via Tiny Engines (pre-order). The first single is album opener “New Air,” an eight-minute krautrock/Americana fusion that sets the bar pretty high for this album. Check it out below. For more on the album, here’s an excerpt of the new album bio by Caleb Cordes:
There’s an album of Ben Seretan’s that he’s only ever referred to as “my insane Italy record.” That’s how he first pitched it to me in my minivan in the fall of 2019 — and that’s how he calls my memory back to it now, telling me to begin the story there. I will: Ben and I were on tour together, two solo acts, mano a mano. We were rolling through the suburban Connecticut night, McDonald’s curdling in our stomachs, our laughter and the windshield defogger in a gentle tug-of-war. We joked that this tour was only the second time we’d ever hung out, but the joke was true. I’d met Ben only once before and it was enough to suspect I’d have a good time doing so again. I didn’t know the half — after only a few shows in, I’d already seen the boundlessness of Ben’s capacity to surprise me. No two sets of his were the same — one night was an ecstatic halestorm of high-school virtuoso level guitar shredding, the next an almost sacred devotion to solely harmonium and voice. Several would feature the audience following Ben’s instructions to call in to the same extension on his ambient music hotline, their speakerphones rippling over one another in a mosaic of sound. Each destroyed my expectations, left me in wonder. So: an “insane Italy record” sounded about right to me.
The Italy record is called Allora, an expressive Venetian catchall that literally translates to “at that time.” A catch in my throat forms when Google Translate shows me this text in English. I know that this record was made in 2019, elbowing up to a twilight of innocence before the world that followed. I have images in my mind of its context: Ben and his band (bassist Nico Hedley and drummer Dan Knishkowy, both formidable songwriters in their own right) sweating in the Mediterranean summer, smoking cigarettes on trains, biting into bacchanalian fruit — textbook revelry, ridiculously rose-colored. And I know that this record was made mere weeks after the death of sculptor Devra Freelander, a deeply cherished friend within Ben’s NYC world, whose harmonies are an indelible thread woven through Ben’s 2020 album Youth Pastoral. Ben’s entire community demanded that he go through with their planned tour to Italy even amidst their vivid grief — there were flights booked, people waiting, and no doubt their friend would have wanted them to.
Tracklist
1. New Air
2. Climb The Ladder
3. Bend
4. Small Times
5. Jubilation Blues
6. Free
7. Every Morning Is A