Steve Gunn today releases Acoustic Unseen on Matador Records, a new EP of intimate acoustic versions of songs from his critically acclaimed latest album, The Unseen In Between. Following a year of worldwide touring and road testing the songs with a full band and in solo performances, the 7-track collection presents a spellbinding perspective on this stately set – disclosing the songs’ rich individual elements in Gunn’s dexterous and lyrical guitar style. Listen to the EP HERE.
“After being on the road with the band since January,” says Gunn, “I wanted to spend an afternoon capturing the songs from The Unseen In Between as I originally wrote them, with just me and my acoustic. Mid-year, I went back to the great Strange Weather Studio in Brooklyn, and played through the songs in their most basic form. It felt good.”
Accompanying the EP release is short compilation film Unseen Anthology. Directed by The Mitcham Submarine and edited by James Harman, the 12-minute film weaves together footage from touring, live sessions, official and unofficial music videos – including a breathtaking session for Toutpartout in a transformed convent in Ghent, on the road footage captured on a Fisher Price camera by Steve and his band, and acoustic videos filmed across London, including a Cecil Court bookshop. Taken together, it’s an engrossing, one-stop-shop live document of an artist in need of little more than a guitar and his voice to conjure a transfixing atmosphere, and an arresting visual companion to the EP. Watch Unseen Anthology HERE.
Gunn rounds out 2019 with a run of West Coast dates opening for Dinosaur Jr., followed by solo shows in Japan, New Zealand and Australia. A full upcoming live schedule can be found below.
Over the past few years, Steve Gunn has become one of American folk-rock’s most pivotal and regarded figures – conjuring immersive and psychedelic sonic landscapes live and on record, releasing a stream of lauded albums that have appeared in a multitude of ‘best of’ lists, and recording exploratory collaborations with artists including Mike Cooper, Kurt Vile, and Michael Chapman. The Unseen In Between is Steve’s most accomplished and moving work to date, with sweeping and immersive songs showcasing his deft yet minimal guitar style to the backdrop of rich instrumentation, the lyrics meditative and mysterious yet intimate and poignant.
