southern records

It is a difficult task to put in words proper description of Shannonwright and the music that encompasses her.

The new album, Maps of Tacit, is the latest in the Shanonwright saga, and rightfully has its own distinct place in her oevure. Where Flight Safety is a monument of Shannon's musical penmenship, Maps of Tacit adds to it an implicitness that forces you to listen. In other words, these songs were molded and lashed out over a hunder shows on the road; they were born in a live setting in rock clubs where plaing subtle, quiet music isn't always in comfortable quarters. These songs plead and demand a reticent, attentive audience and scream, or bleed onto themselves when necessary, in order to capture that outlet. What sets Shannon apart from so many songwriters is the sometimes frightning intensity of Shannon playing her music live. These songs convey those dynamics and are unbridled in a ferocious display of heart and spirit.

Maps of Tacit was recorded in sevaral locations where Shannon felt she could unveil these songs befittingly. Christening the recording at Zero Return, an isolated home studio in central Alabama where she recorded all of Flight Safety, she then began to finish the majority of the remainder of Maps of Tacit in Athens, GA with Steve Albini who also mastered the album at Abbey Road in London. Finally, Shannon set up a portable home studio to both finish the album and to be able to bring it to fuition in a setting that was wholly personal to her.

To try to implore to you to hear these strange and elusive words and poetic compositions of Shannonwright; to beg you to hear the skill and pride in which this record is adornded is not at all what I wish to do. I hope for whoever reads this that you get to see Shannon play, and that it pulls you into it likes it has me. It is something so pure and heartfelt; I will forever treasure it.

-A friend