Nearly four years removed from her 2014 LP Pink City, Jennifer Castle has lifted the curtain on a follow-up effort.
Titled Angels of Death, the record will arrive May 18 through Idée Fixe/Paradise of Bachelors. Running 10 tracks in length, Castle's third album is said to be "a sublime meditation on mortality and memory, ghosts and grief... in the form of mystic-minimalist country-soul torch songs about writing, time travel, and spectral visitations.
Castle wrote and recorded Angels of Death in a 19th century church near the shores of Lake Eerie. The album was produced by Jeff Murrich, with lead guitarist Paul Mortimer, acoustic guitarist David Clarke, pianist/organist Jonathan Adjemian, bassist Mike Smith, backing vocalists Victoria Cheong and Isla Craig, and drummer Robbie Gordon joining Castle on the LP.
Castle expanded on the record's themes as follows:
The fictional concept of death rears its head in so many of my songs, always on the periphery, or as a side note, or a reminder, a punchline or the bottom line, always sniffing around like a death dog. For once I wanted to try to put it in my center vision. In order to talk about death, I armed myself with the only antidote I know: writing. Is this a record about death or a record about writing? Hard to tell in the end. I began to think of poetry as time travel. I tried to write messages to the future.