John Grant
has established himself as one of the great musical chroniclers of the American Dream, angled mostly from its flip side - from those who did not thrive. Grant stopped being a boy in Michigan at 12, when he moved to Denver, shifting rust to bible belt, a further vantage point to watch collective dreams unravel. “I quickly learned all about the American caste system and where I fit in. Or didn’t.”

A John Grant album always feels like vignettes divined from a tart book of poetry. Boy from Michigan is the author’s shaggy-dog story, a novelistic approach where songs are more like chapters in a leatherbound book bought from a favorite thrift store. “I guess I’m just thinking about where I came from,” he notes, “and what I went into.”

With Cate Le Bon in the production chair, Grant has pared back his zingers, maximizing the emotional impact of the melodies, stripping the noise of vaudeville and mood-enhancing a fruitful, spare, strangely orchestrated new world for him to live in.

Boy from Michigan will be available from 25th June 2021.