True Songs, by Prairie Clamor

True Songs

by Prairie Clamor

supported by

	/

Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

$5 USD or more
Cassette + Digital Album
Professional duplication and printing. Cassette edition of 100 copies.

Includes unlimited streaming of True Songs via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

ships out within 5 days

$3 USD or more
Full Digital Discography

31

releases

Get all 31 Round Bale Recordings releases available on Bandcamp and save 75%.

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Whiskey Walkin', Contemporary Ruin, Jumpthefox, Sneaking Into the Light, Away & Instinct, True Songs, Rock Music, The Dream of Change, and 23 more. , and , .

Purchasable with gift card

$36.50 USD or more (75% OFF)

1.	Energy Park 04:00	buy track
2.	Song for the Lake Street K-Mart Parking Lot 03:21 video	buy track
3.	Call the Water 04:15	buy track
4.	Beautiful Blue Skies and Golden Sunshine 04:19	buy track
5.	Etherealreal 04:20	buy track
6.	Blood & Diamonds 04:08	buy track
7.	Truth Hurts II 03:38	buy track
8.	Backyard 04:15	buy track

about

After myriad false starts due to detrimental universal matters, Prairie Clamor's Will Bjorndal finally was able to create True Songs. For Will's third album, he ventured first to Canada in fall of 2021, hauling his sixty-pound pedal steel guitar on a sled three-quarters of a mile down a footpath in order to practice uninterrupted, hoping to regain his chops after a summer of musical isolation working as a bee researcher in rural western Minnesota. From there, Michigan, where he met up with his brother at a small Scandinavian-inspired, graduate-only visual art and design school where he was given a room in a basement and one month of time to record. Unfortunately, the studio flooded on the very first day of scheduled tracking.

After a week of lost time ripping up carpet pad, assessing instrument conditions (everything was, somehow, okay), spraying the walls with bleach, frantically thanking graduate students who helped him during the flood, and hunting down vintage equipment formerly lost to the depths of the school, Will was able to get back to work and create the album that had been stuck in his head for over a year: True Songs.

The goal of True Songs was to be both universal and specific: music that anyone can hum along to and emotionally connect with, while at the same time, tell specific stories in and about specific geographic areas. These often hyper-local narratives construct analogies that, in turn, relate to more universal, connectable concepts. For example, very few other than Will have gotten lost in an industrial park while riding their bike, but many have felt lost in the face of increasing industrialization, environmental destruction, and the depersonalization that comes along with capitalism's tendency for empty commercialization.

The same idea was applied to the album's sound: an album instantly familiar, yet still sonically interesting. Guitar, bass, and drum-driven tones were injected with the more unconventional sounds of autoharp, recorder, modular synth, pedal steel, and others, to help it on the way to its goal. Was it achieved? Sort of. It's a difficult needle to thread, and of course, it's impossible to create something universal but the attempt to reach out and connect with someone unfamiliar is one of great importance.

CD VERSION AVAILABLE:
prairieclamor.bandcamp.com/album/true-songs

credits

released May 20, 2022

All music and lyrics by Will Bjorndal except "Backyard," with lyrics by Will and Peter Bjorndal. Engineered, produced, and mixed by Will and Peter Bjorndal. Mastered by the incomparable Neil Weir.

Will Bjorndal - acoustic guitar, Audubon bird call, cymbals, drums, drum machines, electric bass guitar, electric guitar, fake choir, finger snaps, FM synthesizers, folding plastic table, handclaps, LinnStrument, mandolin, maracas, modular synthesizer, organ, pieces of paper, pedal steel guitar, phase distortion synthesizers, piano, stylophone, tambourine, wavetable synthesizers.

Peter Bjorndal - electric bass guitar, "hey," LinnStrument, modular synthesizer, wavetable synthesizers.

Recorded at The Friendly Puppy Music Centre for Basic Research - Satellite Office 2.

For liner notes and other interesting information, visit:
archive.org/details/@friendly_puppy_music.

prairieclam.org
friendlypuppy.org

Wholesale ordering:
thebusinessanacortes.com/distro/

license

about

Round Bale Recordings Mankato, Minnesota

Round Bale Recordings is a record label associated with the Free Form Freakout radio show & podcast series (aka FFFoxy Podcast) that focuses on small edition releases across various physical formats.

freeformfreakout.com

contact / help

Contact Round Bale Recordings

Streaming and
Download help

Shipping and returns

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like True Songs, you may also like:

"everyone is rolling down a hill" or "the journey to the center of some arcane mystery and the entanglements of the vines and veins of the cosmic and unwieldy millieu encountered in the midst of that endeavor"
by Crazy Doberman

supported by 9 fans who also own “True Songs”

A ripper through and through. Psychedelic doom jazz made by some of the best to ever do it William Thornton
go to album
illusory expansion
by Crazy Doberman

supported by 9 fans who also own “True Songs”

I can’t even pick one track I like more than the others. The work is one whole in my opinion and takes me anywhere I want to go. Thank god for the Doberman. Popsnacking
go to album
Pick A Day To Die
by Sunburned Hand of the Man

supported by 9 fans who also own “True Songs”

an amazing album! davborski
go to album
The Convincer (20th Anniversary Edition)
by Nick Lowe

Released in 2001, “The Convincer” is a gentle gem in the Nick Lowe catalog; an anniversary edition provides opportunity for rediscovery. Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 20, 2021
go to album
Diving
by Buddie

Heartfelt indie rock from Philadelphia's Buddie wraps the sincerest of sentiments in big, colorful choruses. Bandcamp New & Notable May 28, 2020
go to album
Waterfowl
by Frankie valet

Slowcore, shoegaze, twee, and noise find their way into this ambitious full length from the St. Louis band Frankie Valet. Bandcamp New & Notable Jan 9, 2020
go to album
In/Out/In
by Sonic Youth

supported by 8 fans who also own “True Songs”

Sonic Youth is one of those bands where you easily run out of superlatives to describe what they created. This could've easily come off as a cynical cash-grab by a band that had broken up 11 years prior to the release of this record, but that's not what this is. Some of my favourite Sonic Youth instrumentals. sentient meat
go to album