Mark Olson & Ingunn Ringvold - Magdalen Accepts the Invitation (2020)

The album’s ten tracks draw upon the couple’s recent adventures together and their earlier adventures apart as well as tapping into, and stretching out, their own individual musical influences. While continuing along the Americana-cobbled roads they took on their first two albums, Olson and Ringvold explore lesser travelled musical territories on this release. Without exactly knowing where they were going, the two were emboldened by each other’s company and unafraid to push forward. As Olson describes it:

The recording sessions occurred during the heat of summer at Thermometer Shelter Studios, located not too far from Death Valley National Park. Olson admits that the experience was not so nice all the time. “You really begin to miss family and friends, community with one another, and college bookstores. The music begins to ask you something at this point: Am I strong? Can I do this all alone? Where am I going?”

“We wanted to go another way. We felt like we were being called to be a husband-and-wife songwriting team driving together at night, holding hands in the dark. Finding new ways of floating above the Armenian mountain streams of our memories when we played music. A language we only understood when nature spoke to us. We decidedly put melody first in a modal sense of the distance between notes and harmony … The writing, melodies, lyrics — then the recording and the takes — are very focused and clean. In the past I would get a start and go for the finish line as fast as possible. This time I doubled and tripled back including on the artwork to make sure everything was absolutely right.”