Will Butler announced a new self titled album, “Will Butler + Sister Squares”, out September 22nd via Merge. With the album announcement they also shared the first single, “Long Grass”.

TRACKLIST:

1. Open
2. Stop Talking
3. Willows
4. Long Grass
5. Me & My Friends
6. Saturday Night
7. Car Crash
8. Sunlight
9. Arrow of Time
10. I Am Standing in a Room
11. Good Friday, 1613
12. Old Year
13. Hee Loop
14. The Window

The video was directed by Will Butler and Sister Squares and Adrienne Anderson. Of the song Butler shared this: “I had read this novella called Jamila by a Soviet/Kyrgyz author named Chingiz Aitmatov from the ’50s. It’s about an artist looking back on his childhood in a small town in Kyrgyzstan in WWII. It’s about love, and becoming an artist, and melancholy, and vast landscapes with a single train track running through them. And it reminded me of young adulthood, of wandering moodily down the train tracks. Maybe the song is also about leaving behind the things that formed us, but trying to remember the world as it used to be?”

Sister Squares are Miles Francis, Julie Shore, Jenny Shore, and Sarah Dobbs, and they all came together through familial word of mouth. “I met Jenny, my wife!, in college, the year before I joined Arcade Fire. When I needed a band to tour Policy,” says Butler, referring to his 2015-released solo debut album, “I asked [Jenny’s sister] Julie to join because I trusted her musically. And I asked Sara, Jenny and Julie’s childhood friend, because I knew she was super talented.”

“Antibalas, who I was drumming for, opened some Arcade Fire shows,” says Francis, who offered to play drums anytime Will needed. Together, they became Will Butler + Sister Squares. Butler was initially set on making a solo record, ideally alone in the basement, but he found himself relying on the band for feedback on lyrics and song structures. Miles Francis produced the record.

The band will go on tour to support the album starting late September/early October.