News: Tenci announce new album A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing’ share new single/video for ‘Two Cups’

Chicago-based band Tenci announce A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing, their new album out November 4 on Keeled Scales. Following My Heart Is An Open Field, the acclaimed debut record that introduced bandleader Jess Shoman’s sonic explorations to the world, A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing sees Shoman steering Tenci’s inventive music further and wilder, spilling over 12 fable-like songs. Lead single ‘Two Cups’ continues Tenci’s interplay between folk and rock, and is presented alongside a gorgeous and playful video directed by John TerEick.

Tenci has traveled through a spout that leads to a restorative lake, finding a new place of compositional and lyrical complexity on A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing. Their first album dealt with letting go of painful life experiences and grief, resulting in feelings of emptiness. As Shoman entered their older and wiser years and gained distance and perspective on that grief, Tenci’s new collection of songs carry a contrasting feeling, a celebration of self-rejuvenation. A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing explores a collection of well-like vessels – cups, puddles, fists – which hold tightly on to love and newfound joy. Each song forms a spell to “fill my heart back up,” Shoman says, “by reframing complex feelings by turning my head sideways and seeing them in a different way.”

From the close-knit Chicago scene, Shoman is joined by Curtis Oren on saxophone and guitar, Izzy Reidy (Izzy True) on bass, and Joseph Farago (Joey Nebulous) on drums. The years following My Heart is an Open Field saw the band playing shows together all over the country before regrouping in Chicago to record A Swollen River with engineer Abby Black (the album was also mixed by Melina Duterte, better known as Jay Som). Together, their playful interplay of loose drums and bass, huffing sax, and vocal waterfalls leave us warmer than before.

A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing: