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May 30, 2024 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Keegan Grandbois

Brooklyn-based composer, producer, and musician Gabriel Birnbaum has spent the last decade amassing an expansive body of work as a producer, solo artist, and frontman for indie rock trio Wilder Maker. Most recently the band released their 2023 effort Male Models, while in 2019 Birnbaum released his debut solo record, Not Alone. In between those releases Birnbaum has also been doing work behind the scenes, co-producing Mutual Benefit’s Growing at the Edges and arranging strings and playing saxes on Katie Von Schleicher’s A Touch of Schleicher in the Night.

Next month, Birnbaum is back with his second album under his own name, Patron Saint of Tireless Losers. Birnbaum and the band—Jason Nazary (Anteloper), Will Graefe (Maya Hawke, Okkervil River) and Adam Brisbin (Buck Meek, Indigo Sparke)—decamped to upstate New York and recorded the album over the course of three days, all without the band having heard the music ahead of time. The resulting record acts as a product of spontaneity and collective chemistry, pulling at stylistic threads of psychedelic music, folk rock, and jangle pop.

Today, Birnbaum is back with his latest single, “A Feeling Unbroken,” out everywhere now.

“A Feeling Unbroken” strips away much of the instrumentation, that colors the record’s other two singles, “Perfect Again” and “The More They Come Around.” Birnbaum’s psychedelic influences give way to stark, minimalist folk, guided by echoing guitar chords and a fragile, plaintive vocal performance. Aside from the dreamy harmonies in the song’s final moments, Birnbaum shines an unrelenting spotlight on his voice and lyrics, letting every imperfection stand out in the spacious mix. Yet, those spectral melodies and vocal cracks only add to the track’s jagged edge, matching the bitter, confessional lyricism: “Now that you’re on your way / How does it feel to remember / From thirty thousand feet / To those apartments where the air pressed down / Down on your throat you’re waking choking in hell / Now you carry the day I know no hand is gonna strike you down / No one’s gonna strike you down.”

Birnbaum says of the track, “‘A Feeling Unbroken’ is a song from someone being left behind, trying to be a dignified loser, feeling love and resentment all jagged and twisted up. The way my voice breaks and comes back exactly at the same time on both takes is so wild. I couldn’t believe it on the playback, real studio kismet.”

Check out the song below. Patron Sain of Tireless Losers is out June 28th via Western Vinyl.