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May 27, 2021 By Mark Redfern Photography by Jasper McMahon

Mega Bog (aka Erin Birgy) has announced a new album, Life, and Another, and shared its first single, “Station to Station” (not a David Bowie cover) via a video for it. Life, and Another is due out July 23 via Paradise of Bachelors. Birgy co-directed the “Station to Station” video with Laura Conway. Watch it below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover art.

In a press release, Birgy had this to say about the “Station to Station” video, which was filmed in rural Colorado: “With this video we tried to play with narratives of attachments and roles played by important people in our lives, how they morph, begin, and end in mysterious points of space, time, feeling. Attachments are inevitable, on some level, but was that person any of the things we’ve projected, why and how did we build the narrative for what is necessary for survival, and within the video, was that figure ever even there, or did they appear because of something extraordinary we found in the dust, and ate?”

Co-director Conway had this to add about the video: “The video was made during a season of death and tectonic shifts in my life and the world. Before vision calcifies as it does during times of stability, it is my hope that here things can be seen as they really are: porous. The sandy bubblegum rocks erode, and skin is as permeable as the disappearing clouds. This is the place where things will not keep being as they always were, and it is not possible to know who is you and who I. You may begin again while I may meet end after end. Or not.”

Life, and Another is the follow-up to 2019’s Dolphine. The album features instrumental collaborations with Aaron Otheim, Zach Burba of iji, Will Segerstrom, Matt Bachmann, Andrew Dorset of Lake, James Krivchenia of Big Thief, Meg Duffy of Hand Habits, Jade Tcimpidis, Alex Liebman, and co-engineers Geoff Treager and Phil Hartunian. It was recorded in various studios: the Unknown in Anacortes, Washington, Way Out in Woodinville, Washington, and Tropico Beauty in Glendale, California.

A press release describes the album like so: “Life, and Another stages a semi-fictionalized drama in the interior self, with scenes of collective longing at the bowling alley, disputes over a distended memory outside the bar, and solitary circling on the patio, looking out over the yard in stubborn awe. These memories, from both past and future, bubble up throughout the album and present their characters as new entries into the Mega Bog Book of Symbols. In ‘Station to Station,’ an artichoke, the decadent indulgence young Erin learned to steam for herself, is gutted around the spine.”

Life, and Another Tracklist:

1. Flower
2. Station to Station
3. Weight of the Earth, on Paper
4. Crumb Back
5. Butterfly
6. Life, and Another
7. Maybe You Died
8. Beagle in the Cloud
9. Darmok
10. Adorable
11. Bull of Heaven
12. Obsidian Lizard
13. Before a Black Tea
14. Ameleon

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