“Working with Arum on her songs and producing her album was a powerful experience. This record is somehow heartbreaking, arresting and hopeful all at once.  And all that starts with her voice, which will stop you dead in your tracks” - Wesley Schultz (The Lumineers).

Arum Rae is the rare artist capable of conveying entire worlds of feeling with the subtlest movement of her
voice. On her new album Loose Ends, mainly produced by Wesley Schultz of The Lumineers, the Wisconsin-based singer/songwriter shares a batch of songs rooted in stories of loss and hope and transformation, each delivered with exquisite nuance. Centered on the quietly powerful vocal presence she’s shown in sharing stages with the likes of Willie Nelson, Rodriguez, B.B. King, and Gary Clark Jr., the result is an immediately transportive body of work, at once meditative and endlessly mesmerizing.

The follow-up to 2017’s Sub Rosa, Loose Ends first took shape as Arum and Schultz swapped song ideas and voice memos in the early stages of lockdown. Although they’d planned to record in Schultz’s basement in Colorado, the two collaborators ultimately headed to Sun Mountain Studios in Woodstock, where studio owner David Baron joined Schultz in co-producing the album and musicians like James Felice of The Felice Brothers and Lumineers bassist Byron Isaacs helped to sculpt its stark yet luminously detailed sound (in addition, Baron adorned several songs with his graceful piano work, an element he’s brought to past recordings with artists like Bat for Lashes and Jade Bird). “When we started recording my intention was to trim everything down to the core, to keep it very lo-fi and acoustic,” says Arum. “As we began working we felt that some of the songs should be taken to the next level, which is what brought us to Woodstock. But even with everything we added it’s still very much minimalistic—we were both protective of the raw emotion and character of the songs.”

In looking back on the making of Loose Ends, Arum speaks to the charmed nature of her collaboration with Schultz and their fellow musicians. “I’ve been fortunate to work with some great people in my life, but it’s crucial to work with someone you really connect with,” she says. “Working on songs like ‘Plain Blue Ribbon’ and being met with so much support helped me to trust my creative gift even more than I had before.” And in sharing the album with the world, she hopes that her audience might find a similar sense of solace and expansion. “A lot of this album is about release; it’s describing the hard times but to me the overall theme is hope,” she says. “No matter what, I want everyone to find their own perception of the songs—with everything I do, I always just want to bring people closer to themselves.”