Your Source for NPR News & Music
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Folk Duo Olden Yolk Embrace Change In 'Cotton & Cane'

Each year, it seems that the first balmy days of spring possess a surreal magic: As new growth emerges in the physical world, our internal processes seem to renew as well, pointing us forward. In the new song "Cotton & Cane" and in the track's colorful video, psychedelic folk duo Olden Yolk use nostalgia as a road-map for the future. Through layers of warm harmonies, spirited drum fills and bright guitar riffs, Shane Butler and multi-instrumentalist Caity Shaffer craft a kaleidoscopic world that steadily builds on its own momentum, landing somewhere between Laurel Canyon lyricism and Real Estate's shimmering dream-pop.

"At the time we started writing 'Cotton & Cane,' Shane was thinking about his relationship with his father, and the lyrics of the song started to take on the tone of a conversation between them," the duo shared in a statement about the song. "Less than a week before we went into the studio, Shane's father passed away, and the song's meaning began to unfold completely; the confusion, the awe, the complex picture of his entire life. For us it was a space to reflect on all that had happened over the year and all that we were moving towards."

Living Theatre is out May 17 on Trouble In Mind Records.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Related Stories