On New Virginity, Nat Harvie (they/them) longs for love – but “not reaching so much for the lover or the friend, as through myself,” says the Minneapolis-based singer-songwriter, producer and engineer. Each song is a story, dreaming of an imagined future as the last person alive on Earth, to a mirror version of childhood, the possibilities of gender in a ruined Eden, and the inevitable loss that comes from loving – all together at once. New Virginity is a substantial departure for the sounds and forms of the young/veteran Harvie’s music: the continual evolution of a vital voice, more than ever armed with the sonic accrual and lyrical assuredness to express the wonderment, and trepidation, of finding one’s way in the world – making mistakes, uncovering your character, grappling with ambition, desire, and neurosis.
“There’s a magical realism to saying ‘I am a virgin again’ – it becomes true – this is the logic of the album.” Nat says. “It’s not regressive though, not revisionist – I am not winding back the clock of my life, I am bringing a *new* virginity to myself.”
Simultaneously elegant and sardonic, Harvie’s storytelling builds from nascent melodies into gleaming tomes of Queer Americana – shooting across the album a dazzling arc of personal evolution and shared experience. A musical expression of memory, a restless vocalization of existence, Nat asks the questions: “What kind of person would I be if I never had to define anything about myself? How tough would it be if I had no claims to make about who or what I am?”
New Virginity is a regenerative awakening to experience/self, at once a return to a corrupt and overgrown utopia, and a renewal of origin. To the listener, this process of discovery is distilled in a captivating eight part song cycle that is both highly intimate and universally relatable.
Deeply individualistic, New Virginity also thrives on the community that is its genesis. Recording began in the lonesome summer of 2020 in a makeshift way behind a friend’s shoemaking studio in Duluth, Minnesota, while Nat lived out lockdown at home with family.
A nearly complete record sat inert for some time after the passing of engineer Eric Littman in summer 2021 – “As long as I didn’t finish it I was still active collaborators with Eric” – until Nat began working with fellow Minneapolis artist Andrew Broder (who had just produced pow-wow singer Joe Rainey’s powerful Niineta album), and their songs quickly began to flourish again in summer 2022. While Broder began tracking grand piano and sourcing strings from friends in the Netherlands, contributions from collaborators like experimental saxophonist Cole Pulice, Lillie West of indie pop outfit Lala Lala, and Alan Sparhawk of Duluth slow music heroes Low further enriched the texture and details of the album taking shape.
