listen hear! spotlights a song we like and think you will too
Grammy-award-winning singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell has been plenty busy over the past decade. She reworked her 2010 album Hadestown into a Tony Award-winning musical, formed the band Bonny Light Horseman and collaborated with Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon’s Big Red Machine and many others.
She recently released the stunning new single, “Bright Star.” It’s the first taste we get of her first solo record in ten years. The self-titled 10 song album will be available on January 28, 2022 via BMG.
After leaving her life in Brooklyn at nine months pregnant and moving back home during the pandemic, the album chronicles Mitchell’s reconnection with the Vermont roots that have been so formative in her life and music. “Bright Star” finds her making peace with the idea of being at peace in the familiar setting of her grandparents’ house.
“During the first pandemic summer I was staying on the family farm where I grew up, in a little house that belonged to my grandparents when they were alive. I could see the stars for the first time in a long time,” Mitchell recalled. “I wasn't traveling anywhere, or even doing much of anything, for the first time in a long time. ‘Bright Star’ is about looking back on years of restless pursuit and making peace with the source of that longing: the Muse, the Great Unknown, the One That Got Away — those things that motivate us that we never can touch.”
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