Little Big Town‘s 12th studio album, It’s a Dying Art, is out. The 13-track project comes 24 years after the quartet’s eponymous debut record was released. All four band members — Kimberly Schlapman, Karen Fairchild, Jimi Westbrook and Phillip Sweet — are all still together, a rarity for a musical group of any genre.
But just because Little Big Town has kept the same lineup, doesn’t mean that they haven’t changed. In fact, they have evolved quite substantially, sounds that are evident in all of the songs on It’s a Dying Art.
“It’s a timestamp of the moment we’re in right now,” Sweet tells American Songwriter. “For me, it takes everything that we’ve experienced into a new place, a new expansion, a new evolution—refined, but also in ways raw and more real than ever before.”
Included on It’s a Dying Art are songs like “The Door,” “We Could Have It All,” “Long Way To Your Heart,” and more. Refreshingly, Little Big Town didn’t hold back on any thoughts or feelings in any of the tracks on the record.
“It dissects some difficult moments in relationships,” Fairchild acknowledges. “And then it also gives a lot of hope and, hopefully, joy for the things that matter the most. That kind of ebbs and flows through the record. ‘Dying Art’ is a song about love that can endure when you stick it out. But it’s also a theme that pours through the record about holding on to making art, holding on to what we can do with our voices and instruments and what we can do in a room.
“And in this artificial age of intelligence, you still can’t replace the humanity that happens when harmonies are sung imperfectly,” she continues. “Flat, sharp. That is the beauty of why the harmony buzzes and feels like it has life in it. When you take that out, it’s very vanilla and stale. So this record especially, [producer Gena Johnson] is so good at getting very intimate. You can hear the throat. Feel like you’re in the room. And that was really important.”
View this post on Instagram
Little Big Town Defies Genres With New ‘It’s a Dying Art’ Album
It’s a Dying Art might be Little Big Town’s 12th album, but they are still evolving and changing. Perhaps more than in any other project, Little Big Town boldly step out of the country genre in all of the songs on It’s a Dying Art.
“I feel like my take on stepping back from it was that it felt like there are familiar types of things that we’ve done before that are us,” West explains. “Those are the things we’re drawn to. So I feel like those things are there, but just with a kind of refreshed sonic picture. With Gena, the way, the sound, the vocals she gets, are in your face; the instruments are in your face. There’s not a ton of layering of instruments. It’s more sparse, but in your face, which I love. I’ll say we’ve never heard our vocals sound like this before on the record, for sure.”
“Just the sound of it, I wouldn’t say it sounds country,” Fairchild adds. “I would give it like a Santana kind of vibe-ish, if you will. We don’t like doing the same thing over and over again.”
With almost a quarter of a century of records, all four of the Little Big Town members are like a well-oiled machine, albeit one that is set in their ways, for all of the right reasons.
“We’re getting older and stubborn,” Fairchild concedes. “But I think we kind of know what we want to do, and we do love having a collaborator or a producer. Gena was the perfect fit. I had done a little bit of recording. Well, a lot of recording with her on the Shelby Lynn record. I knew they would love her. I just knew Gena’s nurturing joy when she listens to music. She’s joyful about it. And so we were like, ‘Well, let’s ask Gena to engineer and mix. And then if it turns into more, we’ll ask her to produce. Let’s just make music and see what happens.’ And that’s kind of how it happened.”
It’s a Dying Art includes collaborations with Ashley Monroe, Jason Isbell, and Kelsea Ballerini. See a track list below.
Little Big Town’s ‘It’s a Dying Art’ Track List:
1. Intro
2. Sucker For A Sad Song (with Ashley Monroe)
3. The Door (with Jason Isbell)
4. Dying Art
5. Hey There Sunshine
6. Over And Over
7. The Idea
8. We Could Have It All
9. Crickets
10. Closing Time (with Kelsea Ballerini)
11. Long Way To Your Heart
12. It’s Coming Around
13. Jet Plane