Curiosity about his ancestry has led songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Son Little on a journey throughout the American South that has resulted in his new album, simply titled CITYFOLK. The West Coast born, Northeast-bred musician fine tunes his craft here and speaks for those enduring tribulations about finding their place in the world.
Equal parts cosmic and carnal, on ‘Cherry’ Little drifts through hazy memories and half-truths, chasing that electric moment when love feels both eternal and fleeting. It’s tender, a little tipsy, and full of wonder – the sound of falling in love at light speed, knowing it might all disappear by morning. Give it a listen below.
Little, whose real name is Aaron Livingston, has sonically traveled everywhere that his songwriting and instrumentation have taken him. He’s toured with the likes of Black Pumas, Kelis and Mumford & Sons and made festival appearances at Newport Folk and Bonnaroo, melding his dedicated fanbase with mainstream listeners. On the soulful fluidity of 2020’s ‘aloha,’ the ANTI- Records act braves his way through realizations about his personal shortcomings but endeavours to persevere through the madness. 2022’s ‘Like Neptune’ unspools Little’s time in therapy, no longer silencing his inner fire. With a catalog that has amassed over 250 million streams, Little’s originality has embarked on a new chapter.
Now living outside of Atlanta, Livingston attributes the development of CITYFOLK to going even further south to record in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. It was there that Little, whose past collaborations include The Roots and RJD2, connected with two-time GRAMMY-winning musician and Alabama Shakes band member Ben Tanner to flesh out sketches of songs that he’d crafted through epiphanies about his family’s roots.
Before immersing himself in the home studio of Tanner’s residence in Shoals, Little recorded voice note demos with subtle instrumentation that became the framework of CITYFOLK. The acoustic demos would soon be mixed with drum machine beats before evolving into live material with contributions from a drummer, bassist and horn players. These jam sessions fully brought the record into existence, while the unchanging southern comfort and musical richness of Shoals remained a backdrop to the album’s hymnal stew. In the late 1960s, the Muscle Shoals Sound Studios housed unbridling protest anthems and melodious love songs that would become the classics of tomorrow. Little’s CITYFOLK is such a relic in the musical path that has been paved for him.
“Just by showing up it brought something out,” Little explains. “I realised, in moving here, that my mother’s people all came from this area, from South Carolina, Georgia–I thought a lot about how interesting it was that I would just sort of gravitate and migrate to a place where I had history.”
“Sometimes the spirits will guide you to a place when you don’t even know you don’t know why you found yourself there,” Little continues.
Son Little
CITYFOLK
Out March 20 via Anti- Records
