Angelo De Augustine has announced a new album: Angel in Plainclothes is set for release on April 24 via Asthmatic Kitty. The follow-up to 2023’s Toil and Trouble is led by the mesmerizing new single, ‘Mirror Mirror’, which finds him singing, “Tell me your mother in heaven won’t cry in vain/ The way you treat your life like it’s just a game/ Tumbling down like an endless waterfall.” Check it out and find the album cover and tracklist below.
“Usually when I make music, I’ll sit down with one instrument and write the song,” De Augustine explained in a press release. “In ‘Mirror Mirror,’ I didn’t stick to this principle and was messing around with the tape machine’s varispeed function- seeing what would happen if I slowed down what I’d recorded on the bowed psaltery, creating an unusual droning noise. The song came from experimenting with layering sound in a very free way and watching as the structure of a song revealed itself.”
In early 2022, after collapsing and being hospitalized with an undiagnosed illness, De Augustine went through an arduous journey of relearning how to walk, talk, see, hear, and play music. “When I made Toil and Trouble I was in a really bad state, having just been released from the hospital and only about halfway through the recording of the album,” the singer-songwriter said. “I had accepted that I was going to die and that I should do all I could to finish the record. I didn’t believe that I was going to survive the illness, let alone ever make music again.
“The experience unfortunately broke me and everything that I thought that I knew or could count on,” he continued. “With this new record, I’m trying to pick up the pieces of who I was and figure out who I am now. I am on a journey where I feel like I may have been given a second chance at life, and I’d like to live it.”
Revisit our Artist Spotlight interview with Angelo De Augustine.
Angel in Plainclothes Cover Artwork:
Angel in Plainclothes Tracklist:
1. Empty Shell
2. Pet Cemetery
3. Spirit of The Unknown
4. The Cure
5. Mirror Mirror
6. Cosmic Ride
7. The Universe Was Our Mother
8. With a Love So Kind
9. Pictures On My Wall
10. Goodbye Baby Blue
