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Nov 13, 2024 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Peach Miller

Orillia is the new project from Chicago singer/songwriter Andrew Marczak. He has already cut his teeth over the years as part of the indie rock band The Roof Dogs and, most recently, alt country outfit Toadvine. Next week, he is set to share Orillia, his first full-length solo album, out on November 19th. The record is a work of plaintive and poetic Americana, recalling indie and alt country touchstones like Jason Molina and Sparklehorse in both style and substance. Marczak recorded the album live and straight to tape one day, using no overdubs and minimal arrangements.

As Marczak describes, “I tracked Orillia in 10 hours during one spring day in Chicago…It was important to me to give myself some restrictions on this record. I decided early on that I wanted no overdubs, seeing this as a way to achieve a certain sound and to get out of my own head a bit. There’s less room to try to fix every little detail or to spend too much time making smaller decisions.

I recorded Orillia straight to tape with Doug Malone at one of my favorite studios, Jamdek, in Humboldt Park. Frequent collaborators Tristan Huygen and Trevor Joellenbeck played a large part in arranging several songs on the record. Tristan mixed it and Terrin Munawet mastered it. The last song we tracked was album opener “My Rifle, My Pony, and Me,” a cover from the old western film Rio Bravo. We got hit by a huge storm once we started playing through, and we told Doug to mic up the skylight. You can hear the patter of the rain and the low rumble of thunder throughout – this was my favorite recording moment.”

Marczak has already previewed the record earlier this year with a cover of “Whip-poor-will” by Magnolia Electric Co. Today Marczak is sharing a final single ahead of the album’s full release, “Pontoon Boat,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Pontoon Boat” is an energetic folk strummer that finds Marczak building atop a sparse and spacious arrangement, filling it with jangly acoustic chords and his own warm tenor. It brims with easygoing charm and keening melodies, encircling Marczak’s vocals in a rush of twangy, urgent guitar strums and wistful mandolin chimes. Meanwhile, beneath the pastoral sheen, the track’s lyrics paint a faintly nostalgic picture of wayward young adulthood: “Do you have a pontoon boat that we can rent / Just for the season? / Gonna get a big girl job at the hotel bar / It’s gonna make me life so easy / Got any more of that? / I can’t get my act together / Mom stopped sending money / Way back in December / What can you stand to lose / Just in one summer?”

Marczak explains of the track, “‘Pontoon Boat’ came out of an experiment (or maybe you could call it a gimmick) that I’ve done at some of my live shows in the past couple of years. I tell people they can send me a certain amount of money and give me a short prompt, maybe a word or a phrase, and I’ll write and record them a little song. I’ve enjoyed removing myself from the initial morsel of inspiration, eliminating that doubt of an idea’s worth that can prevent it from being realized into a full song. It’s forced me to finish songs when maybe I wouldn’t have if it were just for me. I believe the prompt for this one was about a girl with potential that would never quite reach it. The narrative starts more or less realistic as a girl tries navigating adulthood being away from home for the first time, and then takes a turn into mysticism, following our character’s downward transcendent self-discovery…”

Check out the song below. Orilla’s self-titled debut album is due out on November 19th.