Sylvan Esso know exactly what they’re doing, even though they’ve never done it before. They’re about to release their fourth studio full-length, No Rules Sandy, after having just announced it a month ago by performing the full thing at Newport Folk Festival. Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn are no strangers to release cycles nor Newport – but both are different in 2022.
Speaking with the duo at the festival – where they also showcased their Psychic Hotline label and Meath debuted the full-band theatrics of her The A’s project with her Mountain Man bandmate Alexandra Sauser-Monnig – Sanborn describes the experience as “Wile E. Coyote-ing.” “If you just keep looking forward and believing that the cliff is underneath you and don’t look down, then you will keep running,” he says. “It’s a lot of stuff, but also we’re just in this phase where we and our big musical circle of friends are making a lot of things. It’s a very fertile time. There’s no way for us to not share all that.”
He’s talking specifically about their trio of slots at Newport, but he might as well be talking about Sylvan Esso’s second act. They’ve described their first three records as a trilogy, with No Rules Sandy (out Friday, August 12th) launching a new phase in their career. It’s a period that began with them running to the West Coast, and when the bridge dropped out beneath them, they just kept going.
At the start of 2022, the pair set out on what has become an annual cross-country journey. Driving from North Carolina, they headed to Los Angeles for the Grammys, where their 2020 LP, Free Love, was up for an award and they were scheduled as presenters. “Then right when we got there the Omicron spike happened,” Meath recalls in the lobby of New York’s Ludlow Hotel a few days after the Folk Fest. “All our [plans with] friends, the Grammys — canceled.”
They’d rented a house in LA, and found themselves unexpectedly isolated there alone – save for the recording gear they’d brought along. “Without thinking about it and without planning on it, we ended up not in our home with nothing else to do except hang out with each other and just try to make each other laugh and make music,” Sanborn says. “It wasn’t for anybody, it wasn’t about anything. There was no purpose beyond being together and that was the craziest greenlight I think we could’ve had.”