Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly & James McAlister share new song ‘Mercury’

Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly & James McAlister share new song 'Mercury' 1

To celebrate the release of their forthcoming, collaborative album Planetarium, Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly and James McAlister have launched a new song today.

‘Mercury’ is the second track to be released from Planetarium, and its accompanying video premiere can be seen  below. Planetarium is set for release on June 9. The four will come together to perform Planetarium, accompanied onstage by strings and brass, at the Philharmonie de Paris on July 10.

Planetarium unites Stevens’ vocals, McAlister’s beats, Dessner’s guitar performance, and Muhly’s instrumental compositions in a far-reaching musical journey: from lush piano ballads to rock anthems, classical cadenzas to electronic beats with Stevens’ distinctive vocals providing a center of gravity.

The album revolves around the ideas Stevens’ lyrics explore: mythology, astrology, science, astronomy and the intricacies of human consciousness. Listen to ‘Saturn’, the first track to debut from the album, here.

Planetarium began when Dutch concert hall Muziekgebouw Eindhoven commissioned Muhly to create a new piece and he enlisted friends Dessner, Stevens and McAlister, all of whom had been looking for the opportunity to collaborate on a larger scale.

After sketching the framework of the song cycle and performing the piece as a band—flanked by a string quartet and seven trombones—in various forms, the quartet put the project on hold for several years. Returning to the raw material in 2016, Stevens and McAlister reversed their typical process, taking recordings of the live show and adapting to the studio. “We had recorded all the arrangements and the live parts in a studio after our last performance,” says Stevens, “so years later when we all kind of settled down, we said, ‘let’s open Pandora’s box.’”

In the time between Planetarium’s conception and release, Muhly wrote a new viola concerto and a commission for the Metropolitan Opera; Dessner released Trouble Will Find Me with The National, toured extensively and moved to Paris; and Stevens recorded ad released Carrie & Lowell and, with McAlister, toured the album worldwide.

Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly & James McAlister

Planetarium by Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly, James McAlister

1. Neptune
2. Jupiter
3. Halley’s Comet
4. Venus
5. Uranus
6. Mars
7. Black Energy
8. Sun
9. Tides
10. Moon
11. Pluto
12. Kuiper Belt
13. Black Hole
14. Saturn
15. In The Beginning
16. Earth
17. Mercury

Xsnoize Author
Mark Millar is the founder of XS Noize and looks after the daily running of the website as well as hosting interviews for the weekly XS Noize Podcast. Mark's favourite album is Achtung Baby by U2.

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