Indie-pop darlings THE CORNER LAUGHERS return with their first new album in over five years, CONCERNS OF WASP AND WILLOW, out March 27 on CD and Streaming. The band's sixth full-length release and the keenly-awaited followup to 2020's critically-hailed TEMESCAL TELEGRAPH, the new record balances sunshine and shadow in the band's distinctive style and resonates with wit, whimsy and bewitching melodies. Already previewed by the hit indie singles “Rainbow Cardigan” and last year's “Dark Matter,” CONCERNS OF WASP AND WILLOW is up for pre-order and presave now:

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Northern California indie pop/folk outfit THE CORNER LAUGHERS have been weaving a rich tapestry of timeless sounds and lyricism since the early 2000s to ever-increasing acclaim, solidifying their quintessential lineup of Karla Kane (vocals, ukulele), Khoi Huynh (bass, vocals and more), KC Bowman (guitar, vocals and more) and Charlie Crabtree (drums) on their 2015 breakthrough album MATILDA EFFECT. When last we left our heroes, they'd spent five years crafting its followup, the band's Big Stir Records debut TEMESCAL TELEGRAPH, only to have its release date coincide with the onset of the 2020 pandemic. In a musical miracle for troubled times, the album's themes and musical settings resonated with the unease of the year and offered solace for the losses and isolation of that bleak miniature era. The global music press took note: Goldmine Magazine called it “a wonderfully enticing triumph,” The Swindonian labeled it “a magical otherworld, idyllic and innocent and yet poignant in its many charms,” and Shindig! Magazine's five-star review concluded “Every track is absolutely brilliant, brimming with vim and vigor.” In the end, TEMESCAL TELEGRAPH was not just a leap forward for the band, but a lifeline of comfort for fans old and new.

We haven't been treated to the unique wordplay, inventive arrangements and sheer idiosyncratic ebullience that characterize THE CORNER LAUGHERS' original music for over half a decade, and it's arguable that we need them more than ever. The world remains unsettled, and anyone possessed of empathy might find themselves vacillating between profound sadness and the need to reclaim the joy on which hope is founded. With their new album CONCERNS OF WASP AND WILLOW, THE CORNER LAUGHERS audaciously and artfully create consonance from those very contrasts. While the band is often thought of as purveying “sunshine” pop, Kane's lyrics and the band's musical textures have always balanced the dark and the light. On CONCERNS, erasing that dichotomy becomes a mission statement with endlessly fascinating results. Listeners first heard this new blend last Halloween when the single “Dark Matter” appeared, its title belied by its jubilant beat and bright melody as Kane celebrated (not for the first time) ravens and crows, inviting listeners to join the band's “new crone coven” in solidarity with anyone who's ever felt like an outsider.

The blurring of the lines between seeming opposites came into even clearer focus on this January's single “Rainbow Cardigan”: here, vibrant hues stand out against graveyard grey, stark minor key ukulele gives way to expansive major key harmonies, and the chorus hook itself proclaims “We were old, yes we were ancient / We were young, yes, we were barely conceived.” Kane rightly describes the tune (already a hit on indie radio worldwide) as “a microcosm of the album as a whole, with its imagery of colors and shades, and its distinctive blend of melancholy and exuberance, anxiety and wonder.” When listeners hear CONCERNS OF WASP AND WILLOW in full this March, it'll be abundantly clear what she means from the very first track, “Terra Mia”. It begins sweetly, all jangling uke and delightful wordplay, but it grows denser and darker as it unfolds. “It's an epic folk-rock tale of environmental destruction and apocalyptic imagery,” Kane explains. “Is it describing events eons ago or yet to come in the near future? Probably both!”

If that effortless melding of future and past, giddiness and anxiety, and light and darkness evokes twilight for you, listen on. Embedded within the album is what Kane refers to as “the Dusking Trilogy” starting with the second track, “Dusking.” The tune is a wistfully romantic slice-of-life idyll with a fully organic classic pop arrangement that retains the pulse of its '80s synth-pop inspiration. Later comes the elegiac chamber pop of the closing “Larkspur Landing,” with its autumnal imagery and hints of transitioning between worlds (yet even here there's the promise of renewal in the natural world). Between the two and at the album's heart is the moody masterpiece “The Harvestman,” the identity of its seemingly ominous title character shrouded in ambiguity but the lyrics “Let the night air in, I want to feel it under my skin” suggesting acceptance and even a longing for what he brings. The half-light of sunset suffuses other songs as well.

Beyond acknowledging and contemplating the malaise and challenges and of our times, CONCERNS also weaves calls to action into its quilt, subtly and often joyously. The band's long-held environmental activism fuels the bounce of “Crumb Clean,” based on a piano riff created by Kane and Huynh's daughter Octavia, who plays it here. Ecology, specifically that of the band's native California, informs the warm jazz-folk of “Red Yarrow, Yellow Yarrow” and surfaces in “Larkspur Landing” as well. The sweeping “Universe Point,” written by the band's KC Bowman, ponders the cultural tension between those who allow themselves to be swept away by conspiracy, bigotry and ignorance, and those who value kindness, science and education, welcoming imagination but remaining rooted in reality. And there could be no better embodiment of a fact-based flight of fancy than “Victoria Sponge”, co-written by Huynh and Helen Luker (of England's Fun Of The Pier, who also sings on the track), spanning over 150 years of London history and narrated by omniscient Victorian ghosts who never lose sight of the small pleasures in life – the chorus is, of course, a cake recipe – while also pondering environmental destruction and renewal.

It should be clear by now that collaboration is a key ingredient in the way The Corner Laughers bring the album to life: Bowman and Huynh are both consummate players and arrangers able to draw on touchstones from the ancient to the “retro” to the futuristic as appropriate, and Crabtree's empathetic drumming bounces from folk-punk to jazzy swing as each song requires. The record also finds the band welcoming back co-founder Angela Rhoades (née Silletto) after a decade away for cameos on three tracks, while Bradley Skaught of Bay Area indie pop legends Bye Bye Blackbirds sits in on drums for “The Harvestman” and the woodwinds of Jeri Sykes complement the baroque vibes on “Larkspur Landing.”

All of which only scratches the surface of the world (or worlds) conjured by THE CORNER LAUGHERS on the new album. Its rich imagery -- encompassing woven textiles, cartography, botany, circular timelines and so much more – meld with its musical textures and instantly memorable melodies to describe itself in one final, but instinctively coherent, paradox. It is, as always with the band, a place very much worth visiting, and we at Big Stir Records invite you to make these CONCERNS OF OF WASP AND WILLOW your own.