On July 13, The Love Language will release their Merge Records debut, Libraries.
The Love Language, initiated by Stuart McLamb, is a fortunate by-product of the North Carolina native’s rudderless mid-20s, where a tempest of breakup, inebriation, and incarceration found the abandoned songwriter embarking on a storage-space recording project to slow his seeming disintegration. The growing body of emotional fight songs, committed to MP3 with a high-school era multitrack recorder, became postcards from exile, a way to let his friends and former flames know he was getting along, battered but not beaten. The self-immolating beauty of the budget correspondences was exhausting and triumphant; McLamb’s dalliances with rejection and redemption would be minted in a self-titled debut on Portland independent label Bladen County in March of 2009.
Soon afterwards, the mighty ensemble band version of The Love Language—a dysfunctional symphony of musical vagrants—disbanded to pursue personal projects. McLamb, who had roamed the state since recording The Love Language, moved back to Raleigh where Libraries producer/engineer BJ Burton adopted the one-man band and helped harness the extraordinary might generated during these sessions. Among the moments captured on Libraries are Spector-esque walls of reckless sound, cavernous drums, middle-school percussion, and moody swells of stringed instruments, all decorated hastily with stray leads, which bleed beautifully all over everything. 
The effective average of McLamb’s madness and Burton’s discipline rendered an album in the classic sense, in which no song is expendable and no passage is without purpose. With Libraries, McLamb transitioned from a guy who could write a good album to an individual who can maintain a good band. The sooner we listen, the sooner we may figure this whole love thing out.
Watch this video of producer/engineer BJ Burton and Stuart recording the record during the little NC blizzard last winter.
Download “Heart to Tell” from Libraries now, and see the band currently on tour with more dates being added all the time!
The Love Language will also release a demo version of “Brittany’s Back” as part of a split 7″ with Let’s Wrestle available exclusively this Saturday on Record Store Day. Visit RecordStoreDay.com for stores near you!
Tour Dates:
04-15 Raleigh, NC The Pour House
04-22 Greensboro, NC Earth Day Celebration at Center City Park
04-24 Washington, DC Sweetlife Festival
04-28 Chapel Hill, NC Memorial Hall w/ St. Vincent
09-11 Raleigh, NC Hopscotch Festival w/ Public Enemy
Track Listing:
1. Pedals
2. Brittany’s Back
3. This Blood Is Our Own
4. Summer Dust
5. Blue Angel
6. Heart to Tell
7. Anthophobia
8. Horophones
9. Wilmont
10. This Room
