Elvis Perkins will release a new album, Creation Myths, on October 2 via MIR/Petaluma Records. Today he shares a new single taken from LP, “Half Life.” Of “Half Life” Perkins told them, “I give you my 4th long-playing collection of songs, Creation Myths. How these songs found their ways out of the void and into full form is near-mysterious to me now as how we all showed up here on this earth. I’m satisfied enough with what a garden ouroboros suggested, that each song is singing the creation myth of its own existence. The full spectrum technicolor presentation of them certainly owes a lot to the great Sam Cohen who produced and provided the low end. I will leave the big picture at that for now.

“‘The Half Life’ is a song for being not all there, or rather not all here, at half mast, half-hearted, marked half off. It seems to me as though a good many among us are moving around this way. . Needless to say it’s tempting to seek wholeness teaming up with another human who may be experiencing the same. Part love song, part algebraic nursery rhyme, part existential crisis .”

Elvis further notes, “to help move the many boulders in the path to realizing the great American myth of Liberty & Justice for All, I will be donating a dollar of each record sale through my website to the Equal Justice Initiative (https://eji.org / ).

Creation Myths, produced by Sam Cohen ( Kevin Morby , Guster , Benjamin Booke ), will mark the first album Perkins has released since his soundtrack to the 2017’s The Blackcoat’s Daughter, a film directed by his brother, Osgood. The forthcoming LP makes subtle nods to Americana and spooky, blissed-out folk, but never lights for too long on any one spot. If there is a lyrical or thematic through-line to Creation Myths, it might simply be a longing for connection, be it romantic or spiritual. He notes, “Sometimes you do the best things when you don’t know what you’re doing yet. I called this record Creation Myths because, in a way, I really don’t know how these songs came into being. So they are the explanation of themselves.”

Perkins has a long and storied career as a maker of songs, releasing several celebrated albums since his appearing with his critically acclaimed 2007 debut, Ash Wednesday (XL Recordings). At the time he toured extensively with his Elvis Perkins In Dearland band and in 2009 they released both the Billboard charting Elvis Perkins In Dearland LP, and the Doomsday EP, both via XL. In 2015 Elvis released I Aubade via MIR.

In recent years Elvis has made two film scores: I Am the Pretty Thing the Lives in the House (Netflix, ’16) and The Blackcoat’s Daughter (A24 ’17). A soundtrack album for the latter was released via Death Waltz Recording Co. in 2017. His single, “There Go the Nightmericans” (’17), with the help of Revolutions Per Minute directs all proceeds to The Emergent Fund which supports communities most threatened by Trump administration policy.

Until Covid hit the world, Elvis was in a Beth Morrison Productions theater piece, HOME, the brainchild of his old friend, Geoff Sobelle (Object Lesson), for which he provided live original music. HOME world premiered at Philly Fringe Arts in 2017 and had been scheduled to tour internationally through 2021.