NÛS Share ‘Magic in the Trees’ from New Album ‘Shapes of Longing’
Sacramento experimental rock group NÛS return with ‘Magic in the Trees’, taken from their forthcoming album, ‘Shapes of Longing’, out October 15 via Third Star Records.
NÛS have a history stretching back to Sacramento in the early ’90s. The original group of Percy Howard, Stephen Sullivan, Richard Kazanjian and drummer Greg Cain signed with Sub Rosa in 1995, leading to ‘All the Vertical Angels’, recorded at Bill Laswell’s Greenpoint Studios. A second Sub Rosa album, ‘Inside Is the Only Way Out’, followed before the musicians eventually went in different directions.
Now Howard, Sullivan and Kazanjian are working together again, joined on drums by Sean Sullivan, Stephen’s son, who grew up around the band.
Their new album, ‘Shapes of Longing’, doesn’t try to recreate the earlier records. There are still traces of the strange, atmospheric quality that made NÛS difficult to place the first time around, but the new material also brings blues, soul and a stronger rhythmic pull into the picture.
Today we’re pleased to share ‘Magic in the Trees’.
The song began with a melody Stephen Sullivan couldn’t quite find a home for. Rather than forcing it, he waited.
“‘Magic in the Trees’ began with the melodic introduction, but I didn’t know what to do with it,” Sullivan explains. “Over about the next six months, I would hear in my mind’s ear the proceeding music section by section for this song, usually at night. The last section came to me the same exact way, but after Percy had written his words.”
“Rich and Sean played a huge part in the arrangement of this and all of our songs. I’m very grateful that the universal Muse has gifted and entrusted ‘Magic in the Trees’ to NÛS.”
Percy Howard took the song somewhere equally dreamlike. His lyrics grew from an image he had carried around for years: what love might mean to creatures who never grow old.
“The lyrics to ‘Magic in the Trees’ were inspired by a fantasy, reverie, fever dream that I’ve had for years about how hard it would be for immortal fairies, the fae, to sustain centuries-old love affairs,” Howard says.
“The fae understory is a dramatic casting for obsessive love of all types, even for humans in the ‘now’. This song, with its sweeping emotional textures, soaring violin and Natalie Carol’s beautiful backing vocals is NÛS at its romantic best.”
That combination of mythology and very human feeling fits neatly into ‘Shapes of Longing’. Across the album, Howard returns to love, faith, mortality and desire, but the words generally arrive after the music has begun taking shape. He says it is rare for a NÛS song to start with a finished lyric.
The record itself came together quickly. Howard says most of it was developed over roughly eight months, often beginning with a bass line, guitar phrase or small musical idea brought into rehearsal and then pulled apart by the whole group. At other times a nearly complete composition arrived, as happened with Sullivan’s ‘Left Behind’.
Several songs also led NÛS toward the blues. ‘John the Revelator’ is their reconstruction of the traditional song associated with Blind Willie Johnson, while slide guitar gradually found its way into ‘The Reaper’ and ‘Left Behind’ as well.
‘Shapes of Longing’ was recorded in October 2025 at 25th Street Studios with engineer Gabriel Sheppard and mixed by Joe Chiccarelli. Guests include violinist John Ettinger, pianist Jack Perla, Broun Fellinis saxophonist David Boyce and vocalist Natalie Carol.
For a band returning after such a long break, ‘Magic in the Trees’ doesn’t sound particularly interested in looking backwards. It has some of the drama and unusual harmonic movement that belonged to the old NÛS, but there’s also a warmth to it that feels very much like the band as they are now.
‘Shapes of Longing’ is out October 15, 2026 via Third Star Records.
Headline photo: Cassandra Foster
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Third Star Records Website / Facebook / Instagram / X / YouTube / Bandcamp
