Ages and Ages Return with New Album, New Song, and Spaces in Their Name

Hooray and huzzah! Portland’s masters of folk-chorale uplift, Ages and Ages, are returning with a new album, which also doubles as a vocabulary lesson. (On that topic, note the official shift in moniker from the crammed-together “AgesandAges” to the more sensible, if less Google-able “Ages and Ages.”)

Ages and Ages’ second album is called Divisionary, a portmanteau of “division” and “visionary” that illustrates the separation from pack mentality and the isolation that often results from it. The 11-track album comes out on March 25, 2014 on Partisan Records; here’s the album-closing title track “Divisonary (Do the Right Thing),” which premiered on All Songs Considered today.

It’s a great song, and in keeping with the Divisionary theme, it’s a sort of schizophrenic one, too: Beginning as a bummed out strum with Ages and Ages frontman Tim Perry all by his lonesome, the song builds gradually as more of the team joins in, adding parts and voices, transforming a statement of solitary seclusion into a communal declaration.

Following the release of their first album Alright You Restless in 2011, Ages and Ages took much of the past couple years off, changing lineups and focusing on new material. The band now includes Perry and co-founder/bassist Rob Oderdorfer, along with drummer Levi Cecil, guitarist John McDonald, keyboardist Becca Shultz, and percussionists Annie Bethancourt and Sarah Riddle. Needless to say, everyone sings as well. The album was written during a difficult period for the band, during which its members lost various loved ones; it was recorded at Jackpot Studios with Tony Lash and at Oberdorfer’s house.

Take another listen to “Divisionary (Do the Right Thing)” above and peep the tracklist after the jump. March 25 can’t get here soon enough.

Ages and Ages
Divisionary
Partisan Records
March 25, 2014

01. Light Goes Out
02. I See More
03. No Pressure
04. Big Idea
05. The Weight Below
06. Over It
07. Our Demons
08. Ante Up
09. Calamity is Overrated
10. These Ravines
11. Divisionary (Do The Right Thing)