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Chris Bathgate Returns In A Wash Of Dreamy Imagery

Last year, Michigan singer-songwriter Chris Bathgate put out an EP titled Old Factory, his first release after a five-year gap in which he'd toured, taken time off and essentially dropped out of the music business. On May 19, he'll release Dizzy Seas, his first full-length album since 2011 — and today marks the unveiling of its first single, a lovely, brooding six-minute ballad called "Northern Country Trail."

Bathgate's ornate songs unfold gracefully and deliberately, revealing rich layers over time, and his new work is no different. Inspired by a hike on the North Country Trail in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, "Northern Country Trail" rolls by in a wash of dreamy imagery, with a video to match. Bathgate directed the video while in the process of recording Dizzy Seas.

"While the song is based on considering romantic tensions while hiking in the woods, there's another side to the song — one that is about reality, perception and memory," Bathgate writes via email. "It's a song about your mind and body doing different things at once. The recording process feels like that to me: You're listening to a portion of music you've recorded, imagining the portions you haven't, performing music and listening to yourself perform that music, while considering what inspired it."

Dizzy Seas Tracklist

1. Water

2. O(h)m

3. Come To The Sea

4. Beg

5. Hide

6. Northern Country Trail

7. Dizzy Seas

8. Low Hey

9. Tintype Crisis

10. Nicosia

Dizzy Seas comes out May 19 via Quite Scientific.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)