Perhaps you’re familiar with Star Moles, the ultra-prolific recording project from Philadelphia musician Emily Moales; her recent album Highway To Hell is one of our favorites of the year thus far. Perhaps you’re also familiar with Rubber Band Gun, the similarly ultra-prolific project from regular Star Moles contributor Kevin Basko; Rubber Band Gun and Star Moles dropped the song “Frodoboy” a couple of months ago. Perhaps you would also like to know about Sam and Louise Sullivan, a sibling duo who make a ton of music with Moales and Basko and who have a new album of their own coming out soon.
Sam and Louise Sullivan grew up around the US, and they started playing folk music together as kids. These days, they both live in Philadelphia, where Louise runs her own ceramics business and Sam works as a teacher. Both of them are part of Historic New Jersey, the home studio/label/collective that put out Star Moles’ Highway To Hell. Sam Sullivan is in the Historic New Jersey house band with Emily Moales, Kevin Basko, and drummer Jem Seidel, and they all play on each other’s records.
Sam and Louise Sullivan recorded their debut EP Sam And Louise at their respective houses during the pandemic, and they’ve gone on to make a bunch more records, including last year’s Sweet Enough. Next month, they’ll follow it with another one called Love & Devotion. Once again, they recorded the whole thing with Basko, Moales, and Seidel. Lead single “Down On Love” is a ragged homespun folk-rock ramble. Sam says, “The riff is a misremembered beat from a rap song that was popular circa 2012,” but I can’t figure out which one. Here’s what Louise says about it:
“Down On Love” is one of our wonky attempts at pop music. We were trying to write a down-the-middle love song, but, of course, we ended up with a manic, chromatic, folk-rock thing. Sam was in a period of insisting that Kevin record two drum takes on top of a drum machine for every song. Emily Moales sings backups.
Below, check out “Down On Love,” the Love & Devotion tracklist, and Sam and Louise Sullivan’s short list of two upcoming shows.
TRACKLIST:
01 “Down On Love”
02 “Love & Devotion”
03 “There You Go Again”
04 “Miss Mercedes”
05 “Since I Left”
06 “Doing Time”
07 “My Guy”
08 “After All These Years”
09 “Irish Goodbye”
10 “Treehugger”
TOUR DATES:
6/28 – North Adams, MA @ Solid Sound Festival
8/07 – Lowell, MA @ Boarding House Park (with Iron & Wine)
Love & Devotion is out 7/24 on Historic New Jersey. Pre-order it here.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source stereogum.com ’
