Greta Van Fleet have announced that their third album, Starcatcher, will be released on July 21 via Lava/Republic Records. It's the follow-up to 2021's The Battle At Garden's Gate.
The news is accompanied by the release of the first single from the album, Meeting The Master, a slow-burning, other-worldly epic that begins with gentle acoustic guitar and a vocal from Josh Kizska that soars like a call to prayer, before the band come crashing in somewhere north of the two-and-an-half-minute mark.
“Meeting The Master peers into an esoteric world heeded by the word of a wise teacher," explain Greta Van Fleet in a statement. "Sung in the voice of a devout believer, and eventual group exclamation, the song details the love these fervent followers have for their teacher and their firm belief in his vision. It’s an exotic spiritual journey. A dark comedy that inevitably ends in chaos."
Starcatcher was recorded with Dave Cobb at his base at RCA Studios in Nashville, and finds the band exploring "the duality of fantasy versus reality and the contrast between light and darkness."
"We had this idea that we wanted to tell these stories to build a universe,” says drummer Danny Wagner. “We wanted to introduce characters and motifs and these ideas that would come about here and there throughout our careers through this world."
"When I imagine the world of Starcatcher, I think of the cosmos,” explains bassist and keyboard player Sam Kizska. “It makes me ask a lot of questions, like ‘Where did we come from?’ or ‘What are we doing here?’ But it’s also questions like, ‘What is this consciousness that we have, and where did it come from?’”
“We didn’t really have to force or be intense about writing, because everything that happened was very instinctual,” adds frontman Jake Kizska. “If anything, the record is our perspective, and sums up where we are as a group and individually as musicians.”
Starcatcher is available to pre-order now.
Greta Van Fleet: Starcatcher tracklist
- Fate Of The Faithful
- Waited All Your Life
- The Falling Sky
- Sacred The Thread
- Runway Blues
- The Indigo Streak
- Frozen Light
- The Archer
- Meeting The Master
- Farewell For No
