Erin Rae Gets Bittersweet on 'Can't Cut Loose' [Fresh Track]

You've probably heard a lot more of Erin Rae than you realize. When she's not playing her own songs, she serves as a harmony vocalist par excellence with groups like Little Bandit, and recently recorded appearances including Margo Price's All American Made and All Them Witches' Sleeping Through the War. But whether or not you caught her earlier endeavors with her group the Meanwhiles, you're in for a real treat: Rae will soon take center stage with a new LP called Putting on Airs.

Our first taste of the album is a mightily bittersweet track called "Can't Cut Loose." Sonically, it's laid-back folk with an Appalachian inflection, highlighting Rae's rich and mesmerizing mid-register voice. But the lyric is about something slippery and painfully frustrating — the struggle to get past things you got used to relying on, even if they weren't good for you. ("Want it even now, don’t you? / Wanna be free like we once were / But I can’t cut loose," she sings.) That goes for substances as well as relationships with others and with yourself.

“I wrote this song to that incessant longing voice in my head that tells me I need something else to make me feel different or better,” Rae told Noisey, who premiered the track. 

Take a listen below. Putting on Airs (recorded in a former Franciscan monastery now called The Refuge in Appleton, Wis.) is due June 8 via John Paul White's Single Lock Records, and you can preorder a copy in your favorite format right here. One cool, notable feature of that link is that it includes an option to see a list of independent music shops in your area compiled by recordstoreday.com. Your next chance to catch Rae in person is at the release show for Joshua Hedley's Mr. Jukebox, April 24 at The Basement East.