Today, Squirrel Flower, the project of beloved Chicago-based artist, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ella Williams, has announced her fourth studio album, Say Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going, will be out on August 21, through Polyvinyl Record Co. The album is an account of the locations and the characters Williams encountered as she traveled across vast American biomes.
Tracked live at makeshift studio Merry Meadow in Door County, WI with a cast of Chicago music heads including co-producers Seth Engel and Jack Henry, and later painstakingly refined and rerecorded to perfection in Asheville, NC by Alex Farrar (MJ Lenderman, Wednesday, Waxahatchee) at his Drop of Sun studios, Say a Prayer’s production mirrors its songwriting process.
Along with the news about the upcoming album, the artist has shared her new single, “Reelin.” While talking about the ditty, the composer says: “The lyrics started as an art piece I made on an overdue Kansas Turnpike toll bill. This song is my ode to the push and pull of domesticity and unraveling. Leaving and getting reeled back in, over and over and over and over. This video was born from serendipity and divine timing. There was a huge storm at the time Clay, Jackson and I had planned to shoot in this industrial area I’d been scoping out, and we called the shoot off.
“At the last minute, I looked at the sky and decided it’d be worth trying. We pulled up to the spot just as the clouds were breaking and a gorgeous double rainbow shot across the sky out of the sparkling city. The other footage is from the Indiana dunes, referencing many performance art videos I’ve made of myself playing accordion with the dunes and factories in the background,” says the singer.
Say a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going Track List
1. Say a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going
2. Cleveland
3. Not Me
4. Helicopters
5. Highway Woman
6. Reelin
7. Foot Thick Ice
8. Sick Tooth
9. Fought a Hornet
10. Surfing USA
11. Weightless, Untethered
Leave a Comment