Flock of Dimes

Flock of Dimes shares new single "Defeat", from forthcoming album 'The Life You Save', out Oct 10th on Sub Pop.

Flock of Dimes today shares a new single and lyric video for “Defeat,” a sublime new offering from her forthcoming album 'The Life You Save', out worldwide Friday, October 10th, from Sub Pop.

The orbing new visual feature is directed by digital artist and animator Sabrina Nichols, edited by frequent video collaborator Spencer Kelly (“Long After Midnight,” “Afraid”), and features Flock of Dimes’ Jenn Wasner throughout. 

Wasner says of “Defeat":

“This song represents a moment of total surrender. It’s about the moment I finally allowed myself to accept my own powerlessness, and started the process of learning how to step back and allow others to face the consequences of their actions.

It features a moment of melodic counterpoint that became a sort of mantra for myself as I attempted to make my way through this process—I’m inside it, after all. This realization—kindly first introduced to me by someone I love who sees me clearly—was something of a breakthrough for me.

Learning to see myself as a part of a dynamic (rather than separate, having escaped) was an important step in changing my own behavior—which is, ultimately, the only real agent of change over which I have any sort of control.

Three years after I wrote it, the work continues—I am still working on trying to see myself not as some kind of savior figure, but just another flawed human being, doing her best.”

Across the last few decades – whether it be as Flock of Dimes, as half of beloved duo Wye Oak, or via one of her many collaborations with Bon Iver, Sylvan Esso, and a sprawling list of other musical juggernauts – Wasner’s extensive catalog displays her gift for balancing authenticity and directness with an unmistakable left-of-centre sensibility. Her songwriting has always found her as a keen-eyed observer, a deeply empathetic and thoughtful storyteller with a skill for probing memory, heartbreak, and unhealed trauma, a shroud of syncopation or off-kilter guitar taking a song somewhere quietly prodigious. 

Her last solo album, the critically-lauded 'Head of Roses', took on heartbreak from a dualistic perspective, following a winding thread of intuition into the unknown and into healing.

Her new album,'The Life You Save', takes that a step further; put simply, it’s the most honest, intimate and personally revealing record of Wasner’s career.

As heart-wrenching as they are hopeful, its twelve tracks delve the depths of addiction and codependency, inherited and experienced trauma, and the process of finding peace in the face of others’ suffering. 'The Life You Save' is resonant, unflinchingly exposed – like a missive from the eye of a storm. But while it somehow manages to feel both viscerally raw and vulnerable, above it floats a sense of quiet peace, a sheen of hindsight, or perhaps of acceptance. It is the story of how it feels to be trapped between two worlds—the one you came from, and the one you’ve escaped to; about the belief that somehow, you can take the ones you love with you to this place; about the grief of realising that the only person you can save is yourself.

Jenn is currently leading a new online songwriting workshop through School of Song, taught on four consecutive Sundays - see School of Song for more info.

'The Life You Save' was produced by Jenn Wasner and recorded at Betty’s in Chapel Hill, NC, and Montrose Recording in Los Angeles, CA.

'The Life You Save' also features additional production from Nick Sanborn (tracks 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 11), is engineered by Adrian Olsen & Alli Rogers, mixed by Adrian Olsen, and mastered by Huntley Miller.

Photo by Elizabeth Weinberg

Live dates

Thu. Nov. 06 - Philadelphia, PA - Johnny Brenda's

Fri. Nov. 07 - New Haven, CT - Space Ballroom

Sat. Nov. 08 - Brooklyn, NY - National Sawdust

Sun. Nov. 09 - Somerville, MA - The Rockwell

Tue. Nov. 11 - Washington, DC - The Atlantis

Wed. Nov. 12 - Saxapahaw, NC - Haw River Ballroom

Mon. Dec. 01 - Seattle, WA - Barboza

Tue. Dec. 02 - Portland, OR - Mississippi Studios

Thu. Dec. 04 - San Francisco, CA - Rickshaw Stop

Fri. Dec. 05 - Los Angeles, CA - Zebulon