Elijah Wolf Shares New Single “Care Anymore”

New Album Forgiving Season Out June 23 via Mtn Laurel Recording Co.

Following his 2021 sophomore record, Brighter Lighting, and the subsequent tour, Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter Elijah Wolf found himself feeling unsure, directionless, and unable to create. As he describes, he even thought the record might be his last. It was only through collaboration with producer Sam Cohen, multi-instrumentalist Photay (aka Evan Shornstein), and drummer Joshua Jaeger that he was able to find his way forward creatively.

At Cohen’s direction, Wolf abandoned much of the material he had written over the year and started from scratch, reimagining his sound with a new immersive atmosphere and expanded arrangements full of synths, samples, and effects. The result of those therapeutic and experimental recording sessions is Wolf’s forthcoming record, Forgiving Season. He announced the album last month with his lead single, “We Talked About It,” and today he’s back with another new track, “Care Anymore,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Care Anymore” captures the shift in Wolf’s songwriting perfectly, opening on looped bleary synth percussion and mournful organ chords that form the foundation of the track. These opening verses are sketched with a hazy intimacy, one that bursts outward with the crashing drums and insistent hook of the chorus. Later, Wolf also colors the track with glassy piano and a jagged guitar solo, expanding the instrumental palette before entering a final emphatic chorus. Wolf has managed to both wrangle the disaffected swirl of emotions he was dealing with when writing the record and crystalize those feelings into vibrant indie rock.

Wolf says of the track, “‘Care Anymore’ deals with overblown expectations, boredom, and what it feels like to escape old patterns. When writing it, I’d been thinking about the ways technology influences our relationships with others and with ourselves. This song came about during a time when I felt overwhelmed by life, and writing it brought a lot of catharsis for me.

When I recorded the demo, I’d been listening to a lot of Pavement. I wasn’t sure how the song would land with Sam in the context of this record, but he was excited about it immediately. We dove right in and began experimenting with drum sounds. We took a tiny clip of Joshua playing, looped it, and added reverb for the top of the song. Once we heard that, we felt we had something special.

Using a Nord 3P Percussion, Evan played tuned percussive notes that became a really important musical motif. On the demo, I’d played electric guitar throughout. We ended up stripping the guitar from the verses and replacing it with Sam playing organ, which felt much more intimate and set up the choruses to come as a big release. For the instrumental section, we built tension with piano and wanted a guitar solo that wasn’t too melodic. Sam played a chaotic, heightened solo that really elevated the song.”

Forgiving Season is out June 23rd via Mtn Laurel Recording Co.