The songs on their second album often appear simplistic at first, then split off to unruly places of boiling self-recognition. On ‘Sour Cherries,’ the band starts pared back and slow, introducing the brutal fruit of love and the theme of wanting excess: “don’t you think you’ve had enough?” As Tenci’s voice gets deeper and huskier, they dip into one of the album’s most exciting and unexpected sections.

In Jess Shoman’s words, “‘Sour Cherries’ is very simply about succumbing to the bittersweet feelings of love.”

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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:

1. Shapeshifter
2. Vanishing Coin
3. Be
4. Great Big Elephant
5. Cold Dirty Water
6. The Ball Spins
7. Sharp Wheel
8. Out of Body
9. Sour Cherries
10. Swallow Me Whole, Blue
11. Two Cups
12. Memories

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