Brother Bird, the project of Nashville singer-songwriter Caroline Glaser, has shared ‘Landlord’, the latest track from her forthcoming album, ‘The Lodge In Miller County’, out September 25 via Easy Does It Records.

‘Landlord’ follows ‘Chameleon’, ‘Pariah’ and ‘Dirt’, and gives another glimpse of a record Glaser began writing during a fairly unsettled stretch of her life.

The song dates back to 2023, when she had just turned 29 and was spending time between friends’ guest rooms and her parents’ basement in St. Louis. Writing was one of the few things that felt constant.

“‘Landlord’ was in a big pile of songs I started in 2023,” Glaser says. “I had just turned 29 and was essentially starting over. Most painful, beautiful, necessary year of my life.”

The first version grew out of a small arpeggiated synth part that Glaser left looping while she worked out words and added what she describes as a “clunky guitar part.” It was also the first song from the album that she brought to other musicians.

She made an early demo with Owen Lewis and drummer Jamie Dick in Nashville, and hearing the song with real drums seems to have been the point where a group of sketches started feeling like an album.

“Hearing real drums kind of turned the ‘I’m making these into album’ switch on,” she recalls.

Getting ‘Landlord’ finished was another matter. Glaser estimates that around 14 different versions of the song exist, the result of what she calls one of her worst cases of “demo-itis.”

‘The Lodge In Miller County’ was co-produced by Glaser with Andy Hull of Manchester Orchestra, Jamie Martens and Owen Lewis. It follows Brother Bird’s 2024 album, ‘Another Year’, which Glaser co-produced with Lewis. Her earlier album ‘Gardens’ was made in close collaboration with Hull and Manchester Orchestra’s Robert McDowell.

Those connections have continued outside the studio. Glaser recently toured with Hull and will head back out in September supporting Manchester Orchestra on the West Coast, during the band’s 20th anniversary run for ‘I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child’. The six dates begin September 9 in San Diego and finish September 16 at Seattle’s Neptune Theatre.

She has also been busy away from Brother Bird. Glaser formed Funambulist with Kevin Devine after the two spent months touring together, has contributed vocals to ‘Bad Books 2 (Revisited)’, and has been working on another project with Hull.

For all those connections, ‘Landlord’ feels very much like a Brother Bird song. Its beginnings are small and private: one synth figure, a guitar part, a period when Glaser didn’t quite know what came next. The fact that it took 14 versions to finally leave her hands somehow seems appropriate.

Headline photo: Chris Bauer

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