What are you supposed to miss? What do you really miss? Burnt down olive orchards, mysterious friendships, mothers washing their boots in the sea, attics full of Barbie limousines.

Our third LP, Tell Yourself You’re Going Home, is a love letter to growing up, being stuck, rural California, not having a place to go home to, and boys who jump in the river forever. It sounds like Wilco if they couldn't afford dentists. It sounds like Titus Andronicus chasing Roy Orbison’s ghost through the fuzz.

Recorded over the course of several years and state lines, these 9 songs (and 1 poem by Gion) feature 30 of our dearest pals from all our places. The songs have trumpets and pedal steel and different drummers and everything we know about the way the blood in your head feels when you hang upside down off a train bridge at night.

We made this record in Memphis. We made this record in Denver. We made this record for the kitchens of all our friends. We made this record for our dead dads. For when you can’t smell the fentanyl behind the t-ball tee. For summer wind, blackjack scams, scarecrows in the tire stacks, and bad ideas in cowboy boots. We were never taught how to stand on dust. We made our home where our friends all were, but then our friends went home.

Music by:

Sarah Ault, Hamilton Belk, Jude Brothers, Adam Cabrera, Austen Carroll, Christy Crutchfield, Jawaun Crawford, Dick Darden, Gion Davis, Jake DeMarco, Alec Doniger, Gabe Durham, Isadora Eden, Joseph Engel, Sumner Erhard, Anne Holmes, Evan Jeffers, Lisa Kori, David Knodle, Nate McEwen, Riley Merino, Alissa Nordmoe, Ben Pisano, Clarissa Sarabia, Lucy K. Shaw, Nathan Smerage, Scott Smerage, Angus Smith, Gale Thompson, Mike Young

Lyrics by Mike Young and Gion Davis

Arrangements by Clementine Was Right

Executive production by Gion Davis

Recorded in 2022, 2023, and 2024 by

Scott McEwen and Ben Pisano
Raif Box and Ethan Mayo
Lisa Kori and Mike Young

(mostly) in Memphis, TN, Denver, CO, Fayetteville, AR, and Santa Fe, NM

Mixed by Ben Pisano at The Astuary

Mastered by Joe Lambert

Cover art by Bréa Corcoran

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I (Mike) started writing these songs when I was 19, and I finished them these last couple years with friends who didn’t know me then and made them sound sparkly and fuzzy and angry and sweet. It’s important to keep knowing people! It’s important that knowing is never done! What do I really miss? Compliments from strangers, jokes from bus drivers, realizing something is blood, horses in Santa hats in the supermarket parking lot, night sand, the wheelchair guy outside the bowling alley going downhill to the liquor store if you gave him Pokemon cards, ski vest in the summer, overpass rain, the inflatable palm tree in the back seat with a seatbelt. They told me to look at the lights, but I looked at the ones they turned off.

I am always calling my friends and waking them up from a dream about a houseboat. They are asking me if I know what time it is, they are checking their baby monitors, they are kissing their partner’s forehead, they are moving their partner’s hair to kiss their forehead, they are smoking medical-grade weed on their porch and wondering if they’ll get their security deposit back while they reluctantly engage with me in a conversation laced with the kind of nostalgia that will put me happily to sleep and keep them up for hours.

It’s important to wash the world’s feet with your personality. It’s important to close your eyes when you sing and then to say, “Here, take it again, my eyes weren’t closed enough, I was checking to make sure we were doing it right.” When all I was writing was stuff you couldn’t sing, stuff you looked at with your head, when I was doing that in public and writing songs in private, I always made a big deal that writing should communicate. I made self-expression a bogeyman, and what was I getting at? I think I was hoping someone would slip me an answer. I was always writing half and waiting for the other half, but now—these songs, this album, my third try—I am finally communicating, I think. First with all the people who played on this, wordless, even when singing words, moving through a language of vibration, throwing away signifiers like old motel room keycards, keeping only the language that communicates back to grief, that visitor, that visitor you’ve seen too, like that face that supposedly crosses many dreams, I’ve never seen that guy but I understand the longing: if you’ve seen this face and I’ve seen this face then surely, then surely, then surely–

I made this album with so many people, from the musicians to the visual artists. I listened to the whole thing by myself, driving at night, a city of quiet houses, a city I am not from, between mountains and prairies, and I felt quiet—for a while—carved in, finally, with the world and all its light and longing. You move among many dancers and don’t know which you are the shadow of. Denis Johnson said that. Some French guy said the other is who allows you not to repeat yourself forever. You can poke yourself in the infinity and call it missing. I made my home where my friends all were, but then my friends went home.