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Apr 24, 2017 Bryce Dessner By Christopher Roberts

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Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner (of The National), and James McAlister have all teamed up for a new collaborative album, Planetarium. They previously shared a song from it, “Saturn,” via its video. Now here’s another song from the album, “Mercury,” shared via its lyric video directed by Deborah Johnson. The beautiful track features lead vocals by Stevens. Watch it below.

The project started several years ago when Dutch concert hall Muziekgebouw Eindhoven commissioned Muhly to compose a new piece and he asked his friends Stevens, Dessner, and McAlister to collaborate on it. Stevens and McAlister took the live recordings and adapted them into a studio recording. “We had recorded all the arrangements and the live parts in a studio after our last performance,” said Stevens in a previous press release. “So years later when we all kind of settled down, we said, ‘let’s open Pandora’s box.’”

The press release described the album as such: “Planetarium unites Stevens’ vocals, McAlister’s beats, Dessner’s guitar performance, and Muhly’s instrumental compositions-part rock odyssey, part electronic experiment, part classical opus…. Conceptually, Planetarium revolves around the cosmic ideas Stevens’ lyrics explore: mythology, astrology, science, astronomy and the intricacies of human consciousness.”

(Via Brooklyn Vegan and Spin)

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