Composed in a new Craftsman-style home ten minutes down the road, Mines Falls marks both a stylistic evolution and an ambitious leap in scope even as it retains piano as the heart and soul of the music. Continuing producer and multi-instrumentalist Erik Lund’s ongoing experimentation with electronic programming, the band’s second LP finds the looming atmosphere of anxious ambient noise and classical instrumentation established by Nepenthe now coupled with propulsive drum-machine backbeats and a flair for dramatic choruses. And where the intimate and confessional Nepenthe catalogued songwriter Carson Lund’s confrontation with a friend’s sudden passing and the end of a relationship, Mines Falls shifts toward a more panoramic perspective, tackling the ambiguity and despair of our contemporary moment through a succession of elliptical tales that toggle between political anger and wistful remembrance.

Mines Falls have released their latest single off the upcoming LP (due out in September), “Hey Mother.” Here’s the group on the single: “Hey Mother” is the earliest song I wrote for the record, and therefore the one that’s most tied to the emotions that swirled around our previous album, Nepenthe.  With that collection of songs, I was trying to write very honestly from a place of emotional turmoil, but this song is about landing in a state of acceptance after all of that. The “mother” here is less a reference to my own mother than to a stubborn omniscient spirit to whom I’m trying to communicate some kind of self-reckoning. You might say she’s my conscience as I try to will myself to concede the end of a relationship.”