Stef Chura - "Danny"
It's been a minute (or seven or so years) since we've heard from Stef Chura, a favorite around these parts. Reading about her new album, however, is sort of like that Vince McMahon meme for me where each detail about it is more and more exciting: new album in October - produced in part by Robert Schneider of Apples in Stereo - featuring multiple Elephant 6 alums - with lead single, "Danny," featuring both Mike Mills and Peter Buck of R.E.M.? Be still my heart!
The song itself opens with a horn straight out of a Heartstrings-era Beulah record before the familiar Buck and Mills interplay comes in, and Chura sounds as good and confident as ever. Few lead singles have gotten me quite as excited as this one does, and it's a song I'm already hooked on. Dancing Alone on the Concrete is due out in October via Saddle Creek, and in the advance notes about the album, they write:
Stef Chura’s been through a lot in the last seven years. Maybe you’ve been through similar things. If you haven’t, it’s likely you will soon; everyday difficulty is the primary source here. But Dancing Alone on the Concrete’s key is right there, the adverb in the album’s title: alone. Not loneliness, but personal comfort, self-affirmation, healthy solitude. Not that you’ll find such therapy-speak on this record; it’s too embodied, too rich with experience. It’s clear that these songs come from a place of pain or confusion, that their genesis is in various forms of suffering—you can feel it. As Chura says, they’re about the search for love. And while they never quite arrive there, the rightful object of her affection is right there in every song, in the form of the person singing them.
Ain't that the truth? The album also features production from David Barbe of Sugar, Andy LeMaster of Now It's Overhead, and will probably have a lot more in the way of surprises as we come up to the album's release. You can listen to the song above, pre-order on Bandcamp and keep up with all things Stef Chura at her website.
