Big Thief guitarist Buck Meek is crafting a world all his own. The Texas-bred artist announced Haunted Mountain, his forthcoming solo album, by dropping its earnest, folksy title track last month.
On Wednesday, June 28, Meek released “Paradise,” an equally introspective single that advances Meek’s unique perspective on love.
“Sometimes when you half-hear something spoken, something unspoken inside the words is revealed,” Meek said in a statement. “Your mind fills in the blank, finishes the sentence, infers deep meaning — though you still can’t fully explain it. Jolie Holland sent me some of the lyrics for this song, about feeling in awe of the vastness within a loved one, and I wrote it thinking about how love often feels too big to comprehend, like death, or life after death, or space.”
Meek had expressed a similar sentiment upon announcing Haunted Mountain, saying the album is “about love and… something other. Something bigger than love, something that doesn’t challenge love exactly but stands in contrast to it.”
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as the saying goes, and Meek takes that literally in “Paradise.” Atop delicate acoustics, he sings, “Tell me how you got heaven in your eyes / Heaven in your eyes / ‘I fell into a black hole with the hot flux of hazel.’”
Haunted Mountain will be Meek’s first album since signing with 4AD and his third sol0 album overall, following his 2018 self-titled debut and 2021’s Two Saviors.
Listen to “Paradise” above.
Haunted Mountain is out 8/25 via 4AD. Find more information here.