Advance Tickets - $15 + sales tax and feesWalkup Tickets (DOORS) - $20 + sales tax and feesThe CollectionLittle Deaths BioLittle Deaths is a nuanced, emotional and intimate step inward for the otherwise hyperbolic bandThe Collection, the North Carolina-based indie-pop band founded by frontman David Wimbish.In their time together, the tightly knit, six members of The Collection have inspired listeners withtheir raucous, folk-based indie-pop sound, resulting in an unabashed positivity and participatoryspirit of shared celebration, creating an almost congregational connection with their audience.The Collection built their familial fan base over three independent albums, 2014โs full-length debutArs Moriendi, Listen To The River [2017] and Entropy [2018]. The latter featured โBeautiful Life,โand its 8.7 million-and-counting Spotify streams, earning the band praise from AmericanSongwriter, Glide, Parade and more, even landing on NPR Tiny Desk Judgesโ Picks This wasbolstered by the bandโs riotous and righteous shows touring with the likes of Oh Hello, RIPE, TallHeights and Sammy Rae & Friends.Their 2023 EP and first effort with Nettwerk, How to Survive an Ending was a post-pandemicroadmap of resolve and celebrating the moment.With Little Deaths, however, Wimbish writes about the aches, joys and acceptance of deeplypersonal growth. The progression of the bandโs sound, he says, is palpable. โOur last record wastriumphant,โ he says. โLittle Deaths is about vulnerability.โKey to that vulnerability was Wimbishโs decision to get sober during the pandemic. โIโd beenisolated and drinking a lot, and I realized Iโd lost any sense of presence in the moment,โ heexplains. โWhen I got sober, I realized the best โ and worst โ thing about it was that I felt all myfeelings. I felt really vulnerable.โFactor in pandemic isolation, and Wimbish was faced with an almost existential urgency writingwhat would become Little Deaths. โI had about 200 ideas, mostly just voice memos when I started.But if I was going to develop an idea, I had to ask myself, โDo I believe this in my core? Youโregoing to sing these songs every night and you have to be able to feel it in your soulโ,โ Wimbishsays, adding, โSometimes I need to write songs just to kick myself in the butt.โAnd kick he did. With his five bandmates spread out all over North Carolina, The Collectionโsusually collaborative writing instead fell more to Wimbish alone during lockdown, which allowedhim to tap into a hardwon presence and introspection. โI wasnโt relying on everyone else -my vocals and melody had to be front and center and so the songs had to be able to stand ontheir own,โ he explains. โThen Iโd send them out to everyone to add their parts.โโMedication,โ the albumโs breakout single about overcoming the stigma of needing, asking for andgetting mental health help, came from a January 2023 writing retreat in a cabin in Maine.โโMedicationโ came very, very quickly. I woke up one morning, walked downstairs, made a fire,and just recorded the line, โI deserve to be well.โ Then I just broke down crying. I knew when Isang it this was something I needed to believe deep in my soul,โ Wimbish says. โI wrote the restof it that morning.โ โMedicationโ has since become a viral phenomenon, inspiring tearful reactionvideos, fan art and covers.Recording in Nashville with producer Jeremy Lutito (NEEDTOBREATHE, Joy Oladokun, Jars ofClay, etc.) and engineer Reid Leslie created the opportunity to push Little Deathโs sound to matchthe raw vulnerability of the songs by rearranging them with unconventional instruments, from duct-taped pianos to rubber-bridged guitars, giving the songs an intimate immediacy.The albumโs titular intro โLittle Deaths,โ another song from the Maine writing retreat, is justWimbish at a piano. Lutito set up an extra microphone to record the sound of Wimbishโs fingerstapping at the keys. He sings about his own transformation, the radical honesty people in recoveryuse to describe leaving past selves that no longer serve them, with only the faith that things willget better to guide them forward. โIโm still not the person I had hoped for/But no longer who I was/And maybe all these little deaths are keeping me alive/Like a piece of tired wood underneathambitious vines.โItโs a somber, sober way to begin, but it also establishes the vulnerability that shapes the albumas Wimbishโs voice at times quivering with the fragility of the moment. โI had a lot of fear recordingit that way. It just felt too vulnerable to put on the record,โ he admits. โBut Jeremy was like, โNo,thatโs it, this is where you need to be to sing these songs.โ Iโd come in with this idea that my voiceneeded to be clean and technically perfect, but this way, it actually feels more like my voice live.โPresent, indeed.Embracing this vulnerability also meant songs were free to take on new, thrilling shapes, as onโThe Weather,โ about being at an emotionally exhausted low and just hoping that this too, shallpass. โThe demo version was me picking through an acoustic guitar and [guitarist Joshua Ling]on an electric, but Jeremy wanted me to play it on a rubber-bridged guitar, which sounds like acello. Then we used a baritone guitar, which made it deeper, and recorded the bass through avintage guitar amp,โ says Wimbish. โWe basically completely deconstructed it, but it was Jeremyโsway of keeping us on our toes instead of just recreating the demo.โLikewise, โThe Come Down,โ which navigates a rush of highs and lows musically and thematically,finds Wimbish empathizing with being there for someone experiencing bi-polar mood swingsโfrom the perspective of also suffering from them himself. It is thrilling and at times even jarring,featuring perfectly imperfectly distorted horns.With its hands-in-the-air deluge of emotion, โRain it Downโ may be the most classic-sounding TheCollection-esque song on Little Deaths, but it, too, finds Wimbish tapping into a deep empathythatโs more about trying to accept his flaws than simply celebrating overcoming them. โWhen myheart starts anticipating a majorly needed change in my life - a breakup, a move, a job - it cantake a long time to express it. Fear and anxiety take over, worrying that my needs will hurt othersor leave them feeling abandoned. It becomes easy to be closed off and put up walls,โ he says.โBut often, expressing my truth, breaking the dam, and releasing the flood brings such an intensesense of relief.โโThe Moodโ started out as a demo without much of a beat, but found its groove in the studio, thetrack winding its way around an insistent breakbeat punctuated by horns. Wimbish detailsrebounding after a break-up, even though it may not be the best idea: โBreak my heart again, Iโmalready in the mood.โAs one of the hardest songs for the band to write on the album, โSpark of Hopeโ has a patient,almost timid feel to it that gives its title and message a hard-won feel. โI started to analyze how Ifeel about life, as someone who is often optimistic about projects, but not about my own mentalstate or health or future, and realized I donโt feel like someone who drowns in hope, but Iโm notvoid of it either. I always try to at least carry a little spark of it, just enough to see in the darkness,and hope itโs enough to get me through,โ he says. โI wrote this song while we were in the studio,after almost a year of trying to write it and failing. It came together in a half hour and we recordedit the next day, with the lights low, during a thunderstorm.โโOver Youโ isnโt so much a break-up song as a break-down song, realizing a relationship is overbut still not wanting it to be. โIt took awhile for us to get this one right, โWimbish admits. โWerecorded it three different times with very different arrangements. But with Jeremy in the studio, itfinally found its voice - an ever growing build of emotion that comes crashing back down into asmooth onward momentum.โLittle Deaths shows the band that once wrote songs like โYou Taste Like Wineโ now sober andself-searching, but even more deeply connected to listeners because of it.โI want people to relate to the record in a way that they can feel vulnerable listening to it, becausesharing that vulnerability makes it easier to talk to each other, and help each other get better,โWimbish says.To that end, the band hosted their own music festival, Soil & Sky, in September 2023, on 32 acresof land in rural North Carolina, with plans to make it an annual event. The band plans to includeplaying a series of house parties to tour in support of Little Deaths, โkind of a potluck thing,โWimbish says. โOur community tends to have a lot of room for depth and connection, so weโrelike, why donโt we create a space of intimacy and connection ourselves?โWith Little Deaths, they already have.
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