With his project Empty Country, former Cymbals Eat Guitars frontman and guitarist Joe D’Agostino has been stretching the borders of Americana into indie rock fields of dreams and streams psychedelic. The stories bleed out from the heartland in a much stranger form of non-fiction as well, and on “Pearl” – the band’s new single and the creative sibling to “Marian”, the opener of their 2020 self-titled debut – we encounter such a character in D’Agostino’s own lore in the form of his mother in specter. As with most of the Connecticut-based musician’s intimate epics, it unfolds through a captivating, dark lyrical montage toiled up in prophecy, hallucinations, and the sounds of classic alternative rock transmitting their way through Empty Country’s borealis, arriving at a place of new level of consciousness. “Any day / We’ll escape from our heads / From the chain of consequences / And recall everything forgotten,” D’Agostino sings, with time’s passage being a gateway to a version of the self we’ve not yet met, but know already lives within.

Empty Country’s “Pearl” single is available now on Get Better Records.