Caleb Nichols releases Slate Age

Like a PhD dissertation in contemporary indie rock and alt folk, Caleb Nichols’ third solo album Stone Age Is Back is a fascinating and urgent addition to his growing catalog of music and poetry.

The new LP, which is out October 3rd on US label Royal Oakie (Sugar Candy Mountain, Curling, Sandys) is a meditation on grief— but not in the way you’d expect. Across 13 dynamic and lovingly produced indie gems, Nichols interrogates the grief, guilt, complicity, joy, anger, fear, and dissociative feelings that come along with living through a mass extinction event. Stone Age Is Back isn’t really a political album, or an album even explicitly about the climate crisis— rather, it’s an album that explores what it means to be living and dying right now, in this moment of extraordinary change.

Produced by Nichols (Kill Rock Stars, Port O’Brien), and mixed and engineered by Jay Pellicci (the Dodos, Deerhoof), Stone Age Is Back is sonically immaculate even while the performances themselves exude an immediacy that might remind you of early Modest Mouse, or, more contemporarily, UK punks the Tubs. Recorded in Oakland, the band adhered to a ‘first take-best take’ rule, and moved quickly, recording the entire album in just five days.

The album features a bevy of influences: from the landscapes of North Wales, where Nichols wrote the album during his PhD in queer ecopoetry, to the poetry and theory he read during his dissertation, to the UK DIY bands that inspired him sonically, this album is a well-curated but wild ride through an aesthetic of queer ecology, rustic punk, existential folk, samples of voices in a 600-year old church, frenetic indie pop, spoken word, experimental jazz, and Neil Young-esque shredding. Stone Age Is Back is Nichols’ finest effort, his first since parting ways with Kill Rock Stars, and his return to music after completing his PhD. The doctor is in.

A jaunty bit of twee jangle-pop, ‘Slate Age’ is a tale of unrequited love, encapsulated in a 3:00 minute indie pop track. Echoing Nichols’ indie influences like Belle & Sebastian, but also early jangle-pop architects like REM, Teenage Fanclub and the Go-Betweens, ‘Slate Age’ is a lovingly crafted addition to the always-assembling canon of twee indie songs about heartbreak and moving on, with a little dose of good humor.

“Pour one out for me,” Nichols sings, “I didn’t notice I’d sustained such injuries / at least he killed my softly / with a song.” The song bounces around a modal scale, anchored by a bopping bass track and a tub-thumping, Mo-town-inspired drum part. Heartache? Perhaps. But all in good fun. “That’s just the way / that it goes,” Nichols sings in the refrain. Maybe so.

Stone Age is Back is available for preorder at the following link https://stoneageisback.com/