World Brand New, the stunning self-produced follow-up to Mouths of Babes’ award-winning full-length debut Brighter in the Dark, is a Folk/Americana album in the old-fashioned sense: an album with an arc, meant to be listened to all the way through on good headphones with no distractions.

With ten songs that range from stuck-in-your-head catchy to cinematic and orchestral, married duo Ty Greenstein and Ingrid Elizabeth take you on the Hero’s Journey hinted at in the cover art: One must venture out to the turbulent sea, step fully into the chaos of the world, and face a reckoning, in order to finally come home.

The album (which comes out on October 6th, 2023) can be read as an inner journey, a relationship coming full-circle, and/or a national reckoning — and is meant as all of these.

1. World Brand New
2. I Do
3. One For Me
4. Set You Free
5. Pictures of You
6. Jubilee
7. Except for the Love
8. Summertime
9. My Country
10. I Am Willing?

The album opens on the free-flowing, airy country-pop ambiance of the titular World Brand New (a hook-heavy ode to the lost analog joys of the world, written during lockdown) and the playful wedding ditty I Do, and then the cello of Mai Bloomberg (Raining Jane/Jason Mraz) ushers us into the stoic balladry of One For Me, the yearned reach within Set You Free (about breaking the chain of generational trauma) and then comes the gentle ebb and flow of Pictures of You (which explores the experience of being ghosted by a close friend).

Along next is The Avett Brothers’ Tania Elizabeth-fed fiddle within the foot-tapper of the Cajun/Zydeco romp Jubilee which is in turn backed by the longing of Except for the Love (which Greenstein wrote about her grandparents who were married for seventy-four years), the impassioned Summertime (which is an homage to Elizabeth’s own roots, growing up queer in a small, rural town in Southeastern Ohio), the album rounding out on the beautiful ballad My Country (which personifies America as an old friend who is looking worse for the wear), closing on the Holly Near classic I Am Willing? (itself featuring a mini-Gospel choir arrangement by Motown veteran and Tonight Show Band alum Vicki Randle).

As a proudly independent band, Mouths of Babes draws their strength (and momentum) from a fierce, loyal fan base, grown over their many years as road dogs. “We feel incredibly lucky to have been able to make exactly the album we wanted to make and to have such a strong career — thanks to our incredible fans, who believe in directly supporting the music that matters to them.”

Mixed by Nino Moschella of Bird & Egg Studios (Oakland, CA) and mastered by sound designer Bijan Sharifi, the duo created the enchanting sonic landscape in World Brand New with the help of multi-instrumentalist Michael Connolly, percussionists Sean Trishka and Joe Chellman, violinist Tania Elizabeth of The Avett Brothers, cellist Mai Bloomfield of the Jason Mraz band, pedal steel wizard Josh Yenne, Motown/Tonight Show Band veteran Vicki Randle, and Grammy-nominated vocalist Melanie deMore, among others.

www.mouthsofbabesmusic.com

Mouths of Babes - Pictures of You (Official Single Purchase Link)

Mouths of Babes - Summertime (Official Single Purchase Link)

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