Stream Lowland Hum’s Pastoral ‘Thin’ (Album Premiere)

Music is a hard business. Operators within that realm often become disillusioned and jaded after years of setbacks and touring. But Lowland Hum seem to have found a happy valley between art and commerce, a place where they can continue to be themselves.

The duo, made up of husband-wife team Daniel and Lauren Goans, have a new record coming out this week — Thin. It’s filled with pastoral hymnals that swim neatly around natural themes, deep love, and faith.  

“After four years of nearly constant touring, we found ourselves in the first relatively slow season we’ve known since we began our collaboration as Lowland Hum in 2012,” the duo tells No Depression. 

“We spent the spring and summer of this year seeking health and clarity, and recording this family of songs using our minimal studio equipment assembled in a friend’s attic. It has been a necessary pause, and a gift, allowing space for our deepest collaboration yet. These songs are an illustration of this time of slow reorientation.” 

In many ways, Thin mirrors a biblical vision of early man. The song “Adonai,” named after the Hebrew word for god, shares images of a holy garden and persons experimenting with flint and fire, with a hypnotic guitar melody weaving through a connected ecosystem. 

“Thin Places,” which sports an off-kilter chord progression, pays homage to ponds, landscapes seen through a car window, and naturalist painter Andrew Wyeth. Every motif mentioned in the album is again reassessed in the final song “Yesterday is Forever,” cemeting Thin as a contemplative journey through a young couple’s passion for the natural world. 

Thin arrives in record stores this Friday (Feb. 10). Stream the entire disc below.