Today, Six Organs of Admittance — the longstanding project of Ben Chasny — share “Summer’s Last Rays,” the second single from their upcoming album, Time is Glass, out April 26th via Drag City. In addition, Six Organs of Admittance will tour the West Coast beginning in May; tickets are on sale now. Time is Glass continues a cyclical pattern of acoustic Six Organs records released roughly every 6 years: School of the Flower (2005), Asleep on the Floodplain (2011), and the critically-beloved Burning the Threshold (2017).
Upon a head arrangement of classical chord flourishes, “Summer’s Last Rays” layers in waves of guitar treatments, building a storm concentrically out from the eye until the very air rumbles with a tone both apocalyptic and resonantly soothing. Chasny’s latest song is folk music at a new apex of expression — somewhere in the land beyond prog but not kraut — that succeeds in crafting a unique, encompassing musical take on late season feels.
“Written when Autumn was just on the horizon in 2022, the interlocking guitars on ‘Summer’s Last Rays’ are an attempt to mirror the balance of the end of Summer,” Chasny says. “The main riff of the song is something I’ve been playing live for a couple decades now but has never ended up on a record. Of course with everything that seems in balance, it only takes a little push before it all collapses and a more ominous element rises. It wouldn’t really be a Six Organs song if it didn’t.”
Listen to “Summer’s Last Rays”
Recorded in the visceral environs of home, Time is Glass is sharply focused, even as misty impressionist mountains float through the background. Sweet and spiny, the first single “The Mission” sings itself-as-opening-treatise, before turning abruptly to through events of rural industrial psychedelia/ecosystem goth, synth-tinged acoustic folk, and fingerstyle mastery. With Time is Glass, Chasny is captured once again in the intricate tangle of the fretboards, threading backward through the time of Six Organs of Admittance to form an intimate cosmic expression. The record arrives on LP, CD and digital on April 26th and can be pre-ordered below.
Six Organs of Admittance Tour Dates
Tue. May 28 – San Francisco, CA @ Cafe du Nord (tickets)
Thu. May 30 – Los Angeles, CA @ Permanent Records Roadhouse (tickets)
Sat. June 1 – Ojai, CA @ Deer Lodge (tickets)
Thu. June 13 – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios (tickets)
Fri. June 14 – Seattle, WA @ Sunset Tavern
Sat. June 15 – Anacortes, WA @ The Unknown (tickets)
