San Fermin - The Cormorant I & II (2020)

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San Fermin - The Cormorant I & II (2020)

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Following the critically acclaimed release of The Cormorant I this Fall, Brooklyn-based art pop project SAN FERMIN today announce the March 27 release of The Cormorant I & II, the second and final installment in their latest dual-part album. Introducing the project with the October release of The Cormorant I and garnering critical acclaim from NPR, Consequence of Sound, Paste, TIME and UPROXX, San Fermin now return with eight new tracks that encompass the full scope of The Cormorant story. The resulting 16-track collection completes the narrative set out by The Cormorant I, expanding on bandleader Ellis Ludwig-Leone's questions of identity, growth and its ever-changing variations.

"A huge part of The Cormorant I & II is the lush vocal texture throughout, from our singers Allen Tate, Claire Wellin, and Karlie Bruce, as well as guests like Samia, Eliza Bagg (Lisel), and Sarah Pedinotti (Lip Talk). In planning this tour, I thought it would be cool to highlight this aspect of the music, stripping down the instrumental arrangements and allowing the singers to take center stage. You'll see a different, quieter side of San Fermin, more vulnerable and intimate."

"Little Star" is indicative of The Cormorant I & II's fully-realized narrative, which rushes forward with a fever-dream intensity, endlessly slipping between hazy memory and real-time reflection. Taking place in the ordinary yet enchanted spaces of childhood, The Cormorant I & II centers on the tension between growing up and longing for innocence. Paired with a storybook grandeur that entwines the real and the mythic, the album invites listeners on a trip of willful delusion, described by Ludwig-Leone as, "creating fictions from your life as a way to deal with a more complicated reality."

"The Cormorant I starts with a visit from a strange bird, a death augur, which haunts two characters throughout their lives," he notes of the album's namesake. "The track listing is chronological: the first few songs are about childhood, while the later tracks follow the characters into their more complicated adult lives. Finally, the last song imagines the return of the bird and their eventual deaths."

After writing most of the music in Ísafjörður, Iceland, Ludwig-Leone returned to Brooklyn and sculpted the record's rich sonic landscape with the help of his bandmates: vocalist Allen Tate, vocalist/violinist Claire Wellin, trumpet player John Brandon, saxophonist Stephen Chen, percussionist Michael Hanf, and guitarists Tyler McDiarmid and Aki Ishiguro, as well as a cast of new collaborators, including Attacca Quartet and harpist Lavinia Meijer. In that process, San Fermin dreamed up a two-part album of kinetic and spellbinding movement, spinning a deliberately wayward narrative that follows its two main characters from their earliest years, with Tate portraying the male protagonist while the album's female perspective is provided by a revolving cast of vocalists, including Wellin, Karlie Bruce (a new addition to the touring group), Sarah Pedinotti (of Lip Talk), and Samia Finnerty (of Samia).

"The second part is like the fever dream, upside-down response to Part I," Ludwig-Leone explains of the paired album release. "The jumps between the past and present are more jagged, and memories are subjected to a more critical eye. As I was writing, I was thinking a lot about how memories change over time— the stories you tell yourself and the actual events aren't always in synch."

Threaded with a sly awareness and sense of humor about what Ludwig-Leone calls "the self-indulgence of personal narrative," The Cormorant I & II acknowledges the risk in too much inward-looking and ultimately calls for purposeful reflection. "The way you think about your life changes so much over time," says Ludwig-Leone. "In a way, this record is an argument for allowing yourself to engage with things like family and love, without feeling like that's indulgent. I'd like for people to listen and feel that opportunity for introspection in their own lives, because I do believe it's important for everyone."