Stream Caroline Spence's new album 'True North'

April 22, 2022

Singer/songwriter Caroline Spence follows her great 2019 album Mint Condition with a new album, True North, next week (4/29) via Rounder Records (pre-order), but you don’t have to wait until then to hear it. We’re premiering a full stream in this post. Like her last album, it’s a gorgeous collection of songs that blur the lines between folk and country, and this one has even more of an atmospheric, ethereal feel than its predecessor. The album finds Caroline processing grief, following the unexpected loss of a close family member, but she also calls it “an album of deep love: love for our time on this earth, love for the people that pass through your life, love for yourself exactly as you are, love for unanswered questions, love for searching and yearning and feeling,” and adds that “[grief] itself is a form of love. That’s what I want to remind people—that there’s always room for love, in all its imperfect and impossible forms.” Elaborating further on the new LP, she tells us:

The album is called True North because this is the moment that I have truly found my direction and am fully putting my flag in the sand and saying “this is where I live as an artist — my work and my gift is my vulnerability, and that is it and that is enough.” The title also speaks to the fact that we are all on similar journeys that will take us the same direction — through the peaks and valleys of grief, love, hope and resilience. In hard times, it can feel like we are off course and alone, but we are all actually united in the fact we are all always going through something hard, and that maybe that is the point — to go through it and learn from it and help each other out. That’s what this album is for me, a combination of the lessons learned and the real-time narration of my journey through those peaks and valleys of loss and love. There shouldn’t be shame about it — there should be a soundtrack, and that is what I hope this album is for people.

True North includes the album version of “I Know You Know Me” (the non-album version is a duet with The National’s Matt Berninger), as well as her recent singles “Clean Getaway,” “The Gift,” and “Scale These Walls.” Stream the full thing below.

As previously mentioned, Caroline has upcoming tour dates too. She was supposed to do a headlining run this month (including NYC’s Rockwood Music Hall on April 27), but that was cancelled. Fortunately, she’s still opening part of American Aquarium‘s tour, including the show at NYC’s Brooklyn Made on June 28. All dates are listed below.

Caroline Spence — 2022 Tour Dates
5/6 Off Broadway, St. Louis, MO
5/7 Fitzgerald’s, Berwyn, IL
5/8 Turf Club, St. Paul, MN
5/11 Basement East, Nashville, TN
5/12 Princess Theater, Decatur, AL (solo acoustic)
5/18 Mercury Lounge, Tulsa, OK
5/19 The Post at River East, Fort Worth, TX
5/20 Saxon Pub, Austin, TX Saxon Pub
5/21 Green Apple Arts Center, Eden, TX
5/22 Dosey Doe, The Woodlands, TX
5/24 Fayetteville Roots HQ, Fayetteville, AR
5/27 Eddie’s Attic, Decatur, GA
6/10 Stockholm Americana, Stockholm, Sweden
6/11 Ideal Bar, Copenhagen, Denmark
6/12 Oslo Americana, Oslo, Norway
6/17 Black Deer Festival, Tunbridge Wells, United Kingdom
6/25 Greensboro, NC Blind Tiger#
6/26 Washington D.C. 9:30 Club#
6/27 Philadelphia, PA Underground Arts#
6/28 Brooklyn, NY Brooklyn Made#
6/30 Cambridge, MA The Sinclair#
7/1 Richmond, VA The National#
7/2 Louisville, KY Mercury Ballroom#
8/12 Outlandia Music Fest, Bellevue, NE
9/2 Caveman Music Festival, Weston, CO
9/13 Americanafest West Nashville, TN
9/30-10/2 Sisters Folk Festival, Sisters, OR