The Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw has announced a new album with Sō Percussion, her second project with the New York ensemble this year. It’s called Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part, and it’s out on June 25 via Nonesuch. The first song on the album is titled “To the Sky” which you can hear below.
Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part is Shaw’s first album with her own vocals, and she made a brief statement about her new work:
I hadn’t written a lot of songs, but I certainly loved a lot in my life. I’ve been thinking about doing a solo album for seven or eight years, but it takes the right friends and the right community in the room. The challenge for all of us was: What would we not do together with anyone in charge like a band in the studio writes?
The record follows the Narrow Sea in January, which also featured soprano Dawn Upshaw and pianist Gilbert Kalish. The musicians returned to work with Narrow Sea producer Jonathan Low on Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part. (Low recently won the 2021 Grammy Award for Album of the Year for his work on Taylor Swift’s folklore.) The new project also includes Shaw’s reinterpretation of ABBA’s Lay All Your Love on Me, arranged for marimba and voice.
Let the soil play its simple role::
01 To heaven
02 Another song
03 Let the soil play its simple role
04 The flood follows me
05 Lay all your love on me
06 Throw the bells in the sand
07 A long time ago we counted
08 A gradual fade
09 A veil that blows on the waves
10 A bright morning
