Lowland Hum, the modern folk duo of Lauren and Daniel Goans, have released the second offering, “Take Me In,” from their upcoming full-length album, relatably titled At Home, to be released October 22 through Tonetree. 

The song arrives in the form of an eerie and elegant official video directed by Bond Richards and featuring dancer Angela Zielen. Lauren and Daniel roam a sad, dilapidated landscape while a ballerina haunts the background like an apparition. The couple’s voices zag over sparse instrumentation and palpable lines like: Keep me close to you / All I need is love / Though I can be cool / I respond to love.

Lauren Goans elaborates: I struggle in the dragging tail end of wintertime. When the pandemic hit, we were thankful that Virginia was on the cusp of springtime and that we had small glimpses of new life to hold onto. Our friends living in the midwest were not so fortunate, with months ahead of further isolating ice and snow, and then the long thaw before any hint of green. The lyrics of “Take Me In” came to me after receiving a postcard from one of these friends, expressing with honesty the heaviness they were experiencing at the hand of oppressive winter weather coupled with the challenges of the pandemic. The next time we sat down to write, all I could think about was that agony of yearning and waiting, how it can transform you into a diminished version of yourself, and how we all need someone to accept and love us when we are in that low place.

Created over the turbulent course of quarantine, natural disaster, and the couple’s first pregnancy, Lowland Hum’s new album At Home binds emotional extremes to striking musical simplicity. The band share, “Though we’ve often pined for a long season at home during our many years on the road, we were a bit blindsided by the realities of it, when we found ourselves quarantined like the rest of the world in the early spring of 2020. We realized very quickly that we were actually quite bad at domestic life.” The album simmers soothing like a coping mechanism at times, and explodes in manic triumph at others, but consistently radiates the unconventional dexterity this husband-wife duo have made their musical custom. 

Praised for their dynamic, minimalist arrangements, Lowland Hum are reputed for championing quiet music in an era of extreme noise. The band has self-produced six full length albums and four EPs, toured alongside the likes of Josh Ritter, Penny & Sparrow, Jesca Hoop, and The Oh Hellos, and garnered critical acclaim from several media outlets.

Photo Courtesy: Eric Kelley