R.E.M., the War on Drugs, Angel Olsen, Fleet Foxes and Jason Isbell are among the dozens of artists contributing new, rare or live tracks to the 135-track collection Cardinals at the Window, proceeds from which will benefit Hurricane Helene flood relief work in western North Carolina by Rural Organizing and Resilience, BeLoved Asheville and the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina.
The project boasts new songs from Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, MJ Lenderman, the Go-Betweens, Sharon Van Etten, Little Brother, Sylvan Esso, the Mountain Goats, Hotline TNT, Six Organs of Admittance, Archers of Loaf, Flock of Dimes and Real Estate.
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Among the artists contributing live tracks are R.E.M., the War on Drugs, Phish, Tyler Childers, Fleet Foxes, Drive-By Truckers, Tune-Yards, Superchunk, the Avett Brothers and the Decemberists, while Iron & Wine offers a cover of the Bee Gees’ “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.”
“In the aftermath of a ‘natural disaster,’ it’s important to situate this manifestation of ecological collapse within a history of inequitable exploitation of land and people,” says one of the compilation’s organizers, Libby Rodenbough. “This is a region that has suffered in the name of human progress for a long time. I hope we’re going to take this opportunity to start building a different kind of world in western North Carolina and beyond.”
“Give what you can. Hug your friends and family. Use our experience to illuminate what, unfortunately, this new future will be like for us all: always on the precipice of climate disaster,” adds North Carolina-reared music industry veteran Rusty Sutton, who lent a hand with Cardinals at the Window. “It’s a stark, cold reality, and we’ll only get through it together. A friend of mine who stayed behind to spearhead aid efforts in his neighborhood shared these words earlier, and I think they’ll live with me forever: ‘Our terrain wasn’t meant to handle this storm, but our community was built for the aftermath.’”
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