Lightning Bug have announced their fourth album, No Paradise, which will be out May 2. Their last album, 2021’s A Color of the Sky, was released via Fat Possum, but they chose to self-release this one. Singer and songwriter Audrey Kang wrote the album’s songs following a 4000-mile motorcycle trip from Mexico to NYC.
The first single from the album is the verdant, string-laden “December Song” that draws inspiration from Greek mythology. “I’d just gotten back to New York City after spending every last droplet of energy I had on riding a motorcycle from Nayarit to NYC. When the trip was over, I fell into the lowest low I’ve known,” says Kang. “December Song was my way of giving my life some meaning again, by thinking of my sadness as part of a story, a season. In the song, I retell the myth of Persephone from the perspective of Demeter as she awaits her daughter’s return to a land made barren with grief.”
You can watch the video for “December Song,” which Kang directed, below.
No Paradise:
1. On Paradise
2. The Quickening
3. The Flowering
4. The Withering
5. Opus
6. December Song
7. Serenade
8. Lullaby for Love
9. I Feel…
10. Morrow Song
11. Just Above My Head
12. No Paradise