Peter Mulvey has been a songwriter, road-dog, raconteur and almost-poet since before he can remember. Raised working-class Catholic on the Northwest side of Milwaukee, he took a semester in Ireland, and immediately began cutting classes to busk on Grafton Street in Dublin and hitchhike through the country, finding whatever gigs he could. Back stateside, he spent a couple years gigging in the Midwest before lighting out for Boston, where he returned to busking (this time in the subway) and coffeehouses. Small shows led to larger shows, which eventually led to regional and then national and international touring. The wheels have not stopped since.
Eighteen records, one illustrated book, thousands of live performances, a TEDx talk, a decades-long association with the National Youth Science Camp, opening for luminaries such as Ani DiFranco, Emmylou Harris, and Chuck Prophet, appearances on NPR, an annual autumn tour by bicycle, emceeing festivals, hosting his own boutique festival (the Lamplighter Sessions, in Boston and Wisconsin)… Mulvey never stops. He has built his life’s work on collaboration and on an instinct for the eclectic and the vital. He folds everything he encounters into his work: poetry, social justice, scientific literacy, and a deeply abiding humanism are all on plain display in his art.
Early in 2017, a series of upheavals found Mulvey living through a winter in a friend’s empty house in the small Midwestern town of Fort Atkinson. Unmoored and lost in the middle of his life, walking hours each day, sometimes with friends but most often alone, along the frozen marsh of the Bark river and through the wintry oak savannah nearby. The songs came in fast and strange and vivid. At night he wrote them down at a table in the spare house, just a mile from the Cafe Carpe (which Mulvey describes as his spiritual home). These songs became his new record, There Is Another World, a vivid dreamscape of imagistic, haiku-like auditory sketches, within which are plenty of wrenching, haunting, and even sweet songs.
The thirteen tracks of the record amount to a remarkable, brief, potent stab. Alienation, loss and heartbreak, all are rendered lucid, even beautiful, in the bright-dark sideways light of deep winter. It is also a story of renewal, through close attention and a determined stillness, a piercing gaze toward detail and an opening toward simple acceptance of what is.
Today Glide is offering an exclusive premiere of the enchanting music video for “The Fox”, one of the standout tracks on There Is Another World. With gorgeously trippy animation that brings to mind the dreamlike qualities of the film Waking Life, the visuals complement a song that is an eerie and hypnotic morsel of gothic folk music. Mulvey doesn’t get too complex with his playing but he commands the attention of the listener with his simple yet powerful playing. It’s easy to hear the influence of acts like Iron & Wine as well as Leonard Cohen in the music, with Mulvey dwelling on themes of alienation, heartbreak, and upheaval.
Peter Mulvey shares the inspiration behind the song:
“This song is a pure example of found art. It was winter, and I was just noting exactly what I saw out the window. Only weeks later did I notice that it made a perfect little haiku-like lyric. The music wrote itself in that moment. This song was done before it started. When considering its video, I knew that I wanted something as spare and stark as the song and Kathy Wittman came though.”
WATCH:
There Is Another World is out now on Righteous Babe Records. For more music and info visit petermulvey.com.
