The singer and the songwriter | Dreams! The Dead! Ghost! Future: Exclusive album premiere

TThe singer and songwriter deliver a spiritually and emotionally immersive experience with their breathtaking and supernaturally beautiful new album Dreams! The dead! Ghosts! Future — Premiere exclusively on tinnitus.

After a decade of work, the award-winning queer, interracial folk duo of Rachel Garcia And Thu Tran share a personal collection of songs inspired by grief, late capitalism, and their enduring 18-year friendship.

Their fifth studio release and third full-length album, Dreams! The dead! Ghosts! Future is a collection of true stories written during years of touring on thousands of miles of open highway and during the duo’s personal and artistic evolution. A sign in the window of an abandoned store in McDermott, NV inspired the album’s title. The evocative string of words, punctuated by their enigmatic exclamation points, perfectly summed up the themes of this record. The album’s lyrics tell stories of heartbreak, loss, dreaming for a future that may never come, the upheaval of the oppressive systems that keep us stuck, and the intimate moments of hope and humanity that get us through. Four instrumental interludes titled Dreams!, The Dead!, Ghost! And Future Divide the album into chapters to create a listening experience that reflects the changing seasons.

The first single, Sound and lightwas written nearly a decade ago, in 2016. It began, like so many of the duo’s songs, as a poem Rachel wrote. The poem was an account of a formative and traumatic loss Rachel experienced when she was 18. She gave the poem to Thu, who translated it into a narrative song, with the guitar mimicking the rhythm of train wheels and the chorus conveying a sense of time standing still.

While the duo tirelessly toured the USA and played intimate house concerts, Sound and light became a staple of their show, often serving as an emotional anchor to speak vulnerably about grief and personal loss. As a result, audience members often approach the duo after shows to talk about the losses in their own lives and how they resonate and identify with this song.

The inspiring idea for their follow-up single, The workwas a story from 2017 in the WashingtonPost called The new reality of aging in America from Mary Jordan And Kevin SullivanThe in-depth story profiles several work campers, people of retirement age in the United States who give up their homes and belongings and buy RVs to travel and find seasonal work.

Thu’s personal connection to this story came from watching his father, a Vietnamese immigrant, run a landscaping business for 30 years. He saw firsthand how the daily physical labor took a toll on his father’s body, while the financial stress of not being able to afford a comfortable retirement left his parents in a constant state of anxiety. The song’s relentless, driving rhythm and chant-like, repeating chorus were written to reflect the never-ending, insatiable machine of capitalism.

Musically, this is the only song on the record with lyrics in a minor key. The duo created the song as a modern workers’ anthem, a reflection on the financial and emotional struggles of the working class under late capitalism.

The third single About Simple is an ode to ambiguous grief, remembrance, forgiveness and breakfast. The song’s lyrics reflect Rachel’s complicated relationship with her estranged father, evoking memories as vivid vignettes that take place in the kitchen. The creation of this song is an example of the duo’s current working style, with Rachel having written the lyrics as a fragmentary collage. These fragments are assembled into a melodic structure by Thu, and then the song as a whole is refined and edited by both writers.

The waltz tempo of the song, the lively melody and the poetic lyrics earned the duo a place among the finalists in the The Kerrville Folk Festival‘S NewFolk Competition in 2022, a prestigious honour previously awarded to Adrianne Lenker, Anna-Lena Schröder And Lucinda Williamsto name a few. The duo wanted to use magical realism in the lyrics to bring the emotionality of ambiguous grief into otherwise seemingly mundane details like preparing breakfast.

You take such good care of me is the album’s final single, a meditation on love as an ongoing series of concrete, everyday actions. Having been friends for 18 years and bandmates for 15 of those years, this song and album are a testament to Rachel and Thu’s deep and enduring artistic connection. The song’s universal message of love on the smallest scale is also a representation of the very real ways in which the two have supported each other over their years of working and creating together. The song’s simple arrangement highlights the duo’s signature sound: a conversation between the voice and the guitar, unhurried, delicate and considered.

The album was recorded over 10 days at New Monkey Studio, the former studio of the late Elliott Smith, and tracked using one of the remaining original Trident Triad A-Range mixers from the 1970s to give it a warm, timeless sound.

Garcia and Tran’s musical partnership is rooted in a deep, long-standing friendship. For over 15 years, they have worked together to create a unique artistic voice that combines detailed, sophisticated poetry and striking musicianship. Their songs tell the stories of real people and address themes such as death, grief, and their experiences of the world from their queer, BIPOC, and multiracial identities. Their deep connection runs through their music and performances, creating an intimacy that they share with their audiences.

Rachel and Thu’s respective identities as queer mixed-race Mexicans and first-generation Vietnamese Americans shape the inclusive, modernist perspective of their lyrics, which offer astute commentary on societal attitudes, while their music and melodies sift through decades of classic American song forms and blend genres to produce a unique sound with a fresh, clever and distinctive approach to the classic traditions of folk and Americana.

Listen Dreams! The dead! Ghosts! Future below, you can see some The singer and the songwriter‘s latest videos above, and visit them on their website, Facebook, Þjórsárdalur And Instagram.