Premiere: John Calvin Abney Shares New Single “Prayers and Pollen”
New Album Clear Cities Due Out September nineteenth on Tin Canyon Data through Effectively Saved Secret / Secretly Distribution
Sep 17, 2025
Pictures by Amber Watson
Indie Americana musician John Calvin Abney has spent years each as a touring sideman and a confessional singer/songwriter, enjoying guitar for artists together with Ben Kweller, S.G. Goodman, Lydia Loveless, and John Moreland, all whereas releasing six of his personal albums alongside the way in which. Abney returned to his solo work most not too long ago together with his 2022 album, The Vacationer, written after spending the pandemic traversing the nation as an itinerant author, and his 2024 EP, Shortwaving.
Later this week, Abney is again together with his newest document, Clear Cities, which he wrote within the midst of a meditative interval whereas recovering from vocal twine surgical procedure in 2023. The total album is due out on September nineteenth, and Abney has already shared the document’s lead single, “Final Likelihood,” and its title observe. Right now, forward of the album’s launch, he’s sharing an early hearken to considered one of its unreleased highlights, “Prayers and Pollen,” premiering with Below the Radar.
“Prayers and Pollen” most instantly remembers the softer aspect of singer/songwriters like Elliott Smith or Jason Molina, wordsmiths who have been capable of transmute inside storms into moments of common poeticism. Abney’s ethereal vocals relaxation softly atop delicate beds of guitar, weepy pedal metal, and strings, providing a fragile and lilting high quality to his efficiency in distinction to the deeper, extra earthen resonance of the acoustic instrumentation. In the meantime, his lyrics discover Abney navigating moments of uncertainty with these round him, wishing for connections that really feel extra regular and tangible: “Like Prayers and pollen / I can’t maintain on to / How we seem / Within the smoke and mirrors on the finish / I need to see you and never fake.”
Abney says of the observe, “My first case of COVID slammed into me like a freight prepare after two subsequent lengthy excursions and had me confined to my field of a bed room for almost two weeks. One of many issues that introduced some reduction in as of late was the spring climate and the gentle temperate afternoons I’d stumble out into for a breath of air. My roommate on the time would come out within the yard and sit on a chair twenty paces from me, dividing her time between tackling a tough newspaper crossword puzzle and listening to me battle it out with an acoustic guitar earlier than I’d get winded and relaxation on my again. The track got here from feeling separated from others by worry, but additionally by ego amongst different issues, and the way in some unspecified time in the future all of us be taught to masquerade as somebody who isn’t our true selves in entrance of others. It could really feel like we don’t actually know anybody at occasions, and a lot can really feel so synthetic and carried out. Feeling pissed off and sick within the yard, I spilled it onto some outdated resort stationery as my roommate cheered me on and helped pull me out of my cloudy head.”
Take a look at the track and video under. Clear Cities is due out on September nineteenth through Tin Canyon Data and Effectively Saved Secret / Secretly Distribution.
