Like New Purr

• 1 Hard To Realize 03:30
• 2 Giant Night 04:13
• 3 Gates of Cool 03:07
• 4 Avenue Bliss 03:41
• 5 Boy 02:56
• 6 Wind 01:44
• 7 Refuse 02:50
• 8 Miss Youniverse 02:30
• 9 Bad Advice 03:05
• 10 Take You Back 03:36
• 11 Cherries 03:37
• 12 Evil 03:58
• Total Runtime 38:47

Info for Like New

Purr began in 2017 as the second project from New York City born, raised and forever-based songwriting partners Eliza Barry Callahan and Jack Staffen. Today they announce the debut album Like New, produced by Jonathan Rado (Weyes Blood, Father John Misty, Whitney, The Lemon Twigs) which will be released on February 21, 2020 via ANTI-.

The duo - who had previously captured attention releasing deft, stripped down, warm-toned pysch-pop under their names, Jack and Eliza - shifted to what naturally felt like their next musical gear. If Jack and Eliza showcased the songwriting prowess of a promising young duo (they are both still in their early twenties), then Purr lets Callahan’s and Staffen's work bloom in the fertile ground of a fully realized soundscape. Purr builds upon an ageless, classic sound that at once looks at the past while leaning into their own, individual future - with Staffen’s and Callahan’s vocals humming at the center.

Like New was written in the band’s basement studio in downtown Manhattan, a repurposed storage space beneath a restaurant in the building where Callahan once lived as a young child—thanks to the goodwill of the very last kind landlord in New York City. In the territory of a New York City upbringing, Callahan sites her late close friend and old next-door neighbor, whom she met on the sidewalk when she was eight, the jazz guitarist Jim Hall, as her primary influence in music and life.

While the is band heavily rooted in New York City, the album was recorded at Rado's East Los Angeles studio with and takes on a distinctly west coast feel which glows with a sunny warmth, whirrs with breeziness and is at times a little noir too. As Callahan and Staffen were working on the album opener "Hard to Realize," they couldn’t stop hearing tubular bells in the full swell of the chorus. They rented a set from a nearby drum shop, only to learn upon their delivery that they were the exact bells used in the soundtrack for the 1933 classic, King Kong. As Hollywood ghosts swirl through Like New, Callahan and Staffen's voices knit together forging at times what can eerily sound like one voice.

Callahan and Staffen write: “We wrote the songs that make up this album at the outset of a transitional and particularly uncertain moment in our lives. That early twenties tide change. New patterns took hold as we tried to hang onto old ones. The songs each have their own stories — but at the time they were collectively written, we were dealing with a push and pull between dependence on and independence from people we love, and coming to terms with our own self-expectations. We were resisting and (sometimes) accepting of the inevitable changes in our relationships and friendships, a moment, a specific and strange time in our lives…and, of course, in this… world. That thread was just naturally pulled through the songs.”

"Despite the majority of the album being rather pedestrian, ‘Like New’ is bestowed with the occasional flourishes of something interesting; ‘Avenue Bliss’ is a slow motion disco-jazz voyage through swirling colours and delicate laser gun noises. ‘Boy’ fidgets with a summery playfulness and a loving tone “won’t you treat me right/won’t you be my protection” coos Staffen. ‘Take You Back’ bobs along with a jolly ‘Sgt Pepper’-style bounce, while there’s a grandness lurking in the background of ‘Giant Night’, with its lavish string-laden swoon. ‘Like New’ is neither charming enough to sound like it’s a long-lost record from decades ago, nor is it a modernised homage to the days of dope-fuelled psychedelia." (Adam Williams)

Purr

Purr
began in 2017 as the second project from New York City born, raised and forever-based songwriting partners Eliza Barry Callahan and Jack Staffen. Their debut album Like New, produced by Jonathan Rado (Weyes Blood, Father John Misty, Whitney, The Lemon Twigs) will be released on February 21, 2020.

The duo - who had previously captured attention releasing deft, stripped down, warm-toned pysch-pop under their names, Jack and Eliza - shifted to what naturally felt like their next musical gear. If Jack and Eliza showcased the songwriting prowess of a promising young duo (they are both still in their early twenties), then Purr lets Callahan’s and Staffen's work bloom in the fertile ground of a fully realized soundscape. Purr builds upon an ageless, classic sound that at once looks at the past while leaning into their own, individual future - with Staffen’s and Callahan’s vocals humming at the center.

Like New was written in the band’s basement studio in downtown Manhattan, a repurposed storage space beneath a restaurant in the building where Callahan once lived as a young child—thanks to the goodwill of the very last kind landlord in New York City. In the territory of a New York City upbringing, Callahan sites her late close friend and old next-door neighbor, whom she met on the sidewalk when she was eight, the jazz guitarist Jim Hall, as her primary influence in music and life.

While the is band heavily rooted in New York City, the album was recorded at Rado's East Los Angeles studio with and takes on a distinctly west coast feel which glows with a sunny warmth, whirrs with breeziness and is at times a little noir too. As Callahan and Staffen were working on the album opener "Hard to Realize," they couldn’t stop hearing tubular bells in the full swell of the chorus. They rented a set from a nearby drum shop, only to learn upon their delivery that they were the exact bells used in the soundtrack for the 1933 classic, King Kong. As Hollywood ghosts swirl through Like New, Callahan and Staffen's voices knit together forging at times what can eerily sound like one voice.

Callahan and Staffen write: “We wrote the songs that make up this album at the outset of a transitional and particularly uncertain moment in our lives. That early twenties tide change. New patterns took hold as we tried to hang onto old ones. The songs each have their own stories — but at the time they were collectively written, we were dealing with a push and pull between dependence on and independence from people we love, and coming to terms with our own self-expectations. We were resisting and (sometimes) accepting of the inevitable changes in our relationships and friendships, a moment, a specific and strange time in our lives…and, of course, in this… world. That thread was just naturally pulled through the songs.”

This album contains no booklet.