Buck Meek’s fourth solo album, The Mirror, is out this Friday, and today ahead of its release, Meek shares new single ‘Can I Mend It?’ which ponders connection amid conflict via warbling steel strings, chugging drums and delicate keys.
The Mirror steps through phases of love, from freshly formed to union, and the songs seek an infinite curiosity rather than resolution. Love, as an idea, is always close – but in its reflection comes an afterimage of the way things could be and how they’ve been before. The feedback loop takes hold in ‘Can I Mend it?’ as self-reflection is magnified in partnership: “Can I mend it? Can I make it whole? / Now that you’ve seen into the dark side of my soul.” The answers may come eventually, but the record treats love less as confession than as study – a map of not-knowing and a reverence for those shadows of intimacy.
‘Can I Mend It?’ follows singles ‘Ring of Fire’, a heartfelt promise glowing with warm guitars and Adrianne Lenker’s swooning background vocals, and ‘Gasoline’, in which Meek holds the absurdity of devotion, the choice to love, with equal parts ache and grin.
Emerging from a decade of work together in Big Thief, the partnership of Meek and producer James Krivchenia on The Mirror arrived from the idea to combine the band’s live, kinetic energy with an oblique electronic world. From production projects including Big Thief’s Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You and his recent solo record, Performing Belief, Krivchenia’s work is enlivened through electronic elements, always seeking to deepen sound. The concept for The Mirror welcomed a collective atmosphere in which simultaneous experiment could occur – the musicians responded to each other in real time, while their instruments triggered modular synthesizers.
For The Mirror, Meek and Krivchenia welcomed in friends, family, and longtime collaborators including Adrianne Lenker, who contributed vocals, Adam Brisbin on guitar, and Ken Woodward on bass. New creative partners and longtime friends like composer and ambient musician Alex Somers joined in on synthesizer, toy microphone, an old piano, and Mary Lattimore brought in the sounds of her prismatic harp. A rotating cast of four drummers: Jesse Quebbeman-Turley, Jonathan Wilson, Kyle Crane, and Krivchenia provide a wide dynamic arc of grooves. Germaine Dunes, Staci Foster, Jolie Holland, and Lenker sing as a choir on many songs. Meek’s brother, Dylan Meek contributed piano, keys, and vocals. Adrian Olsen created a wide range of sounds and melodies with modular synths.
With his songwriting acting as a compass to the recording process, Meek invited interaction, instead of limiting the tracks to something controllable. The album was recorded in Meek and Dunes’ Los Angeles log cabin studio, Ringo Bingo. Meek recorded vocals outdoors on the front porch, looking through the living room window where the band played inside.
Inviting in reflection as collaborator and demon as friend, The Mirror doesn’t seek to know but to ask, looking to the shape of a question rather than the illusion of its answer. Lexical mirrors are handheld, tactile, and kept close throughout the record – each one holding up a new truth. The Mirror aptly embraces the unknown with an abiding curiosity and Meek continues to reveal his skill as translator of human feeling and its endless portals.
Praise for Buck Meek
“The Mirror is, in many ways, peak Meek – a batch of candid and deceptively affable country/folk-leaning songs that occasionally kick up rock dust and whose lyrics are an unfussily poetic pleasure.” – Uncut, 8/10
“Slippery fusion of folksong and studio trickery.” – MOJO ****
“An album of sonic multitudes and existential depths… ‘The Mirror’ radiates a collaborative spirit of curiosity, seeking – and finding – wonder and mystery in the everyday.” – Record Collector ****
“A wonderfully rich collection, ‘The Mirror’ is a record that’s easy to love.” – DIY 4.5/5
The Mirror will be available digitally, on standard LP (Crystal Clear) and CD from 27 February 2026. To pre-order, and for more information, head HERE.
Buck Meek – The Mirror
27 February 2026
4AD0870
Tracklist
- Gasoline
- Pretty Flowers
- Can I Mend It?
- Ring of Fire
- Demon
- God Knows Why
- Heart In The Mirror
- Worms
- Soul Feeling
- Deja Vu
- Outta Body
BUCK MEEK ONLINE
Instagram: @buckmeek
Facebook @buckmeeksongs
