Fayetteville folk wonder Jude Brothers has dropped a new EP, “looking for water / finding home!,” which bundles four songs all performed with the harp as accompaniment.
The recordings are live, taken from an April session Brothers did for Fayetteville Public Television’s program “Fayettetunes.” Two of the tracks — “practicing silence / looking for water!” and “last song / upper galinas!” — are from “render tender / blunder sunder,” the breathtaking album Brothers released back in May, but the new renditions are unique and worthy of their own individual cherishing.
The other two songs — “yearnestness!” and “i’m gonna build a life i don’t wanna escape from!” — are previously unreleased, and the latter is already poised to be one of my favorite tunes of the year. While lamenting the self-destructive habits of adulthood, Brothers reminisces on being a wonderfully weird kid: “but i can still remember, that long before the benders, i was so curious and wise: / a filthy feral darling just digging, crawling, snarling, before i wore a girl’s disguise…” I love what that final turn says about gender as performance.
In an Instagram post, Brothers described the release as “a time capsule, of what these tunes sounded like over one of my busiest touring summers ever. they’ve already mutated again since, and i’m excited to see what forms they take next.”